Older cubers discussions

Another Ao50 today, 50.93. Slowly getting faster. Best Ao5 45.2, best single 37.7. I keep messing up when the F2L pieces are paired but not aligned, way too often start sending pieces in the wrong direction. Will continue working on F2L and hopefully get close to 45s in a week or so.
 
C'mon! I'm trying to improve at 4x4 but I can't break the 2min barrier.
I need some advice. Maybe, Mike, you can help me here. I either am very unlucky or else I'm missing some important step in Yau when pairing the edges. As soon as I put the 4th cross edge pair in place I just randomly choose the edge half piece I have in the top left of the front face and put the other in the down right... same thing three times, then I slice the top to the right to pair the 3 edges and start putting in the left bottom the ones needed to pair up another 3 when I undo the slice. Then, if everything goes right either I have all them done or I'm missing two and I do them with the specific alg for Yau.

Okay, when I'm trying to set up the 3 pairs for undoing the slice, 4 times in a row it happened that the second piece I need to set up is already on the bottom of the 1st one so I cannot properly set them all up and end up with 3 unpaired edges, which takes additional time to pair up :( Sometimes this happens during the 1st stage of edge pairing but in that case I just start again with a different edge.

Is there something I'm doing wrong or is it just a case of bad luck?

I also keep having OLL parity much more frequently than 50% of the time.

EDIT: Finally!!! My first sub-2, but still a lot of sup-2:30 because of the aforementioned issue with edge pairing

29. 1:57.38 R2 B2 Fw' D2 B L Uw2 D' F2 B Rw D' R' L2 Rw2 D' Uw2 Fw B' F2 D2 Rw2 B2 R2 L2 Fw' D F2 U' Uw R' Rw2 B2 U Fw2 D Rw2 L2 B' L2

EDIT2: I just ordered a Cubicle Premium Meiying as a self-gift for Christimas, just to check how well these guys lube and sticker cubes... and because my current main is the Yueying and I still didn't have a Meiying, of course.
 
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Mafergut, That was also the first method of pairing I tried, and I sticked a lot with it, but I think what I do now is faster.

After placing the last cross edge I slice the top half of the cube to the left, pair the 3 edge and slice back to pair the 3 edges. After that I just pair 1 left and 1 back until there are no edges left or I have to do the last 2 case, the good thing about this method is that the lookahead is better because when you slice back the first time you can see all that is left to pair up and is way easier to deal with skips than with 3-3-1-1. Try it out and ask any doubts about pairing that way.

Also, awesome times everybody, I'm lagging behind!
 
Yup. 3-2-3 pairing is the way to go after the last cross piece. Slice the top then set up so that 3 pairs will be solved when you slice back. Solve another 2 pairs with slice once and slice back. Solve another 2 pairs in exactly the same way which will by definition solve the last one as well... 3-2-3. There are a few scenarios which can crop up but you'll figure them out with experience.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk
 
Logiqx said:
Yup. 3-2-3 pairing is the way to go after the last cross piece. Slice the top then set up so that 3 pairs will be solved when you slice back. Solve another 2 pairs with slice once and slice back. Solve another 2 pairs in exactly the same way which will by definition solve the last one as well... 3-2-3. There are a few scenarios which can crop up but you'll figure them out with experience.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

 
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Same here. I did 3-3-2 (I knew it as 6-2) which is quick if there are no complications but 3-2-3 is better more often. The linked video was the best I found too. I'm now slightly less slow.
 
Yeah I also use 323 and that was one of the videos I learned from. I do one thing differently now though. At 5:00 he explains how he swaps the front inserts between FR and FL. Instead of solving yellow/green on FL, I would insert yellow/blue to the lower part of FR. That way you're always inserting and solving to FR, which I find quicker - fewer regrips. It also forces you to look ahead a bit more, because you have to look at the upper edge piece (yellow/blue) before slicing it to the back.
 
I do the same as Mark - after doing the first 3 pairs I try to pair all on FR. For example before Uw' I put the edge in FR to pair FLu and FRd and then I look at FRu. I make Uw' and put the edge in FRd to pair FR when I do Uw. Of course sometimes it cant be made but in 90% of cases I do that way.
 
newtonbase said:
Same here. I did 3-3-2 (I knew it as 6-2) which is quick if there are no complications but 3-2-3 is better more often. The linked video was the best I found too. I'm now slightly less slow.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what happens, when there are no complications with cycles between two edge pieces being "cross-paired", this way is super-fast, some times it is just 3-3-nothing as the two last ones will end up paired too but I'm starting to realize that I find this kinds of cycles too often for it to be consistently fast way to pair.

Thanks for the info and the links to you all. I will definitely check 3-2-3 out and try to implement it. I assume that these cycles can also happen, so does that simply happen less often in 3-2-3? Is it easier to spot / correct?

Now that I realize, I also had some problems with 3-3-2 (or 6-2) when by chance I had already one or 2 pre-made edge pairs, which I checked for and put on the top layer to preserve them. I should have been intelligent enough to do, in those cases, a 4-2 instead of a 6-2, as sometimes I ran out of edges to pair in the slice back part of the 6 :( I have sooo much to learn yet about big cubes...

Yesterday I also tried to do a 5x5 solve (I must have solved my new CB 5x5 no more than 3-4 times yet) and I realized that I have also a lot to learn about 5x5 centers and free-slice "tredge" pairing. I can manage to solve it but it takes like... ages, right now. The last bar of the 3x3 centers in particular does give me a hard time currently when it does not want to match up and I need to rotate one part of it to match it with the other, not sure if you follow my poor explanations. This must become easier with practice as it is totally intuitive so, I need so much practice also with 5x5 :(
 
There are a couple of other special cases which aren't mentioned in this video.

One of them is whilst pairing 3 edges and you find the third edge piece is stuck under the first edge piece. Essentially you slice back and do the last 6 edges with 2 pairing. When you get more familiar with this case you actually slice back twice so that you flow seamlessly into 2 pairing. This essentially ends up being 2-2-2-2 and happens 1 solve in 11.

The other case is where the last 4 edges look like 2 distinct groups of edges. I won't attempt to describe it in words but you'll find it in a video by Felix - Yau walkthroughs. The other case I described above also appears in his video somewhere.
 
Regarding Megaminx and being a Roux solver with no experience with CFOP (and no real interest in learning it)... currently I insert the pieces one by one, should I just learn intuitively to make pairs and insert them? Or learn algs? Are there any videos I could benefit from? Any Megaminx especific videos about this maybe?
 
muchacho said:
Regarding Megaminx and being a Roux solver with no experience with CFOP (and no real interest in learning it)... currently I insert the pieces one by one, should I just learn intuitively to make pairs and insert them? Or learn algs? Are there any videos I could benefit from? Any Megaminx especific videos about this maybe?
Click to expand...

You should know pairing better than many CFOP users, F2B has a lot of that. just imagine that instead of pairing using the M layer you have to do it with the outer layers
 
I guess it has something to do with not knowing the color scheme "very well" and by just have been trying it a few minutes, but for now it's pretty difficult for me to make pairs and I feel dumb, I was hoping there was any trick or something.
 
I've done a megaminx solve making pairs, it was hard and slow, 25 minutes instead of 12 or so, but it was the first try so I'm happy with that.

In S2L I was doing pairs like this:
megaminx-s2l.jpg

Is that ok or are there better ways?
 
chtiger said:
Nice. Weren't you averaging about 50 not long ago?
You learned a lot of OLL's at once, so not surprising that you will mess some up.
Click to expand...
Yeah I started speed cubing around July, but knew how to solve with Petrus in 2 minutes or so. The progress was pretty fast and fun, but I've been at about 32 seconds for at least two weeks now. :) Still fun though, just takes longer to improve.
 
muchacho said:
I guess it has something to do with not knowing the color scheme "very well" and by just have been trying it a few minutes, but for now it's pretty difficult for me to make pairs and I feel dumb, I was hoping there was any trick or something.
Click to expand...

There's no trick that I know of; the more you practice, the faster and easier pairbuilding will be for you. Getting used to your color scheme is vital for mega and that just comes with a bunch of solves. Same thing for building pairs without the M slice--practice a bunch and it will become natural.
 
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