[Unofficial] Mike Hughey square-1 multiBLD 10/10

I doubt that's optimal, though. Will send Lucas+Bruce PMs, just in case they miss this.
Yes, I doubt it's optimal too, although I suspect it's kind of close. In any event, even if you can get down to, say, 15, why not go ahead and learn all 89? It's not really that much to memorize. I know it scares a lot of people, but it's really not that much.

If you had bought more sq 1's would you have done possibly a bigger multi BLD?
Well, yes. I actually have 11, but the eleventh is black, where the other ten are white, and I thought it would look nicer if they were all the same. And besides, 10 is such a nice number. I did think about buying more when I bought 8 to bring my total to 11, but I finally decided that was just ridiculous. And the biggest factor is just how long it takes to do it. Things that take two hours or more are just so exhausting. An hour and a half isn't all that bad.

Hey Mike what's your average memo-solve breakdown for a single solve?
My typical memo time is just under 3 minutes. My typical overall solve time is just above 5 minutes. So it's probably 60/40 memorization/solve.
 
even if you can get down to, say, 15, why not go ahead and learn all 89? It's not really that much to memorize. I know it scares a lot of people, but it's really not that much.

I don't find 89 scary, I'd just prefer to spend the time and effort on other things. Plus with only 15 or so, you get to practice each one more so they might be easier/safer/faster. And even if one is determined to learn the full set, it could be a good stepping stone on the way there. One would have a full method earlier.
 
I don't find 89 scary, I'd just prefer to spend the time and effort on other things. Plus with only 15 or so, you get to practice each one more so they might be easier/safer/faster. And even if one is determined to learn the full set, it could be a good stepping stone on the way there. One would have a full method earlier.

You have a point. I never actually tried it to see how hard it would be to trace one slice away. Maybe it wouldn't be bad. It's really just a matter of mentally breaking each face up into halves, and keeping track of each half.

One of the harder things that can happen for me is to get the case "upside-down", where my memorization has the top shape matching the actual scramble's bottom shape and my bottom matches the scramble's top. I would think that would be still harder if you're working from a case that's one slice turn away.

It would also be a bit of a challenge being sure you have a working method to get to the proper case "correctly" for the cases you haven't memorized. I guess I figured it would probably be just as easy for me to memorize all the cases as it would be for me to memorize that. Even knowing that a particular case is, say, 5 moves away, might be a challenge. And then knowing how to get to your memorized case so all the pieces are in the correct spot is also important.

Still, I can see where this might work better for some people, yes.
 
Incredible, Mike! I've been waiting for this ever since we met up at Keystone and you barely missed this! Great work! Now it's time to show people at Keystone this nice little feat!
 
Just a quick note: I had a number of mistakes in my page when I first posted it. So please make sure you read the latest version, as it currently exists on the site. The worst mistake I made is covered by the Note right before the actual memorization list, to handle the shape case EA. It's unfortunate, but it makes that case (and all those cases that pass through it) a little more difficult - you have to simply memorize the way to get to square for that case. Much thanks to Yunqi Ouyang for catching it for me! The reason I never noticed it is because I had already memorized how to get to square for that case, so whenever I got it, I never used the "helpers" to solve to square, so I didn't realize it was wrong.

Again, I did the whole thing by hand, with no computer generation to help, so I don't doubt that there are probably still some mistakes in it. Please let me know if you find any, and I'll correct them as quickly as I can.

And Stachu and Jukuren, good luck!
 
Ok I totally missed this last week when it happened. I don't know how. At least I get this shock late rather than never! Congratulations, you went up another step in the craziness and awesomeness scores, although you're already so high I didn't think that was possible :)
 
I've looked at the issue of covering the shapes with up to 1 or 2 setup moves from a set of selected shapes. In summary, my calculations indicate it requires square-square + 15 other shapes to reach all shapes with at most one setup move. It requires square-square + 4 other shapes to cover all shapes with up to two setup moves. See the spoiler for details.

For only one setup move, my calculations indicate that square-square (as a given) plus 15 other shapes are required to reach any of the 90 shapes.

First, I note that no shape can cover any 2 the following shapes:

cccccc-cceeeeeeee
cccccc-ceeeeeeece
cccccee-ceeceecee
ccccece-ceeceecee
cccceeee-cececece
ccceecee-cceeecce
cceeecce-cceeecce
cceeecce-cceeccee
cceeecce-cececece
cceecece-cececece
ccececee-cececece
cceceece-cececece

Thus, at least 12 shapes are needed to cover the above 12. A brute force search was done to cover all of the above shapes using 12 shapes, plus using square-square and any other 2 shapes to try to cover the rest of the shapes. However, this found that only up to 89 shapes could be covered this way. Thus, square-square (as a given) plus 15 other shapes can allow reaching all shapes with at most one setup move, and no smaller set will work.

One of many possibilities (that has relatively large probability of not requiring a setup move) is this set of shapes:

cececece-cececece (square-square)
cccccee-cceeeeece
cccccee-cceeeecee
cccccee-cceeceeee
ccccece-ccceeeeee
ccccece-ceeeecece
cccecce-ccceeeeee
cccceeee-cceeecce
cccceeee-cceceece
ccceecee-cceeccee
ccceecee-cceecece
cceeecce-cceeecce
cceecece-cceceece
cceecece-ccececee
cceceece-ccececee
cceceece-cececece

(The above is the best set that I found but the search was not exhaustive, so it's possible there could be a sufficient set that has a better probability of not requiring a setup move.)

The (up to) two setup move case turned out to be easier.

For two-move setups, I found that 89 shapes (everything except square-square) can be covered from only 4 shapes. So square-square or anything that covers square-square can be the 5th shape to cover all.

To cover 89 out of 90 shapes from only 4, my search indicates those four must be:

(1)
ccccece-ceeeecece
(2)
cccceeee-cccceeee
(3)
ccccece-cceeeecee
or
ccccece-cceeceeee
(4)
one of the following five:
ccceecee-cceceece
ccceeece-ccececee
ccceceee-cceecece
cceecece-cceecece
ccececee-ccececee

But if square-square is a given shape, there are several other possibilities for covering all shapes with square-square and 4 others (since only 86 shapes must be covered by the other 4). The best of these is the following set:

cececece-cececece (square-square)
cccccee-cceeeecee
ccccece-cceeeecee
ccceecee-cceceece
ccceecee-ccececee

The above set (or its mirrored version) minimizes the number of shapes requiring two setup moves (41), and also minimizes the probabilistic average of setup moves (1.276).

This table gives how much is covered by zero-, one-, and two-move setups.
Code:
setup moves   shapes   percent chance
    0            5         7.72%
    1           44        56.99%
    2           41        35.29%
 
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