No, I'm still doing 2-look on 4x4 and can't even execute half the PLLs let alone do them fast . I did look at the splits of several solves and concluded that my 3x3 stage is not that bad. The solve with Joey must have been an outlier.
I would still like to optimise my 3x3 stage but I haven't decided yet how to do it. I really should learn full big-cube PLL anyway for 5x5. On 4x4, OLL and COLL would be more useful. With OLL it's always possible to recognise the case quickly. With PLL, case recognition is harder and/or slower, which means I could waste time doing an F perm instead of a fast A perm (as I would for 2-look) only to find I still have parity to fix. Perhaps I will learn just the diagonal swap PLLs since they are all equally slow.
PLL recognition can be pretty quick. There's a system for looking at two sides, and knowing what PLL is involved. I'm not good at it, but I'm learning, as I pickup more PLL.
When you have an Anti-Sune, you can also solve the corners with U', then R' U' R U' R' U2 R = sune from the back. Similarly, the regular sune case, if you do U', you can solve it with R' U2 R U R' U R.
So, if you have a Sune, you do a U' and then it's like an antisune on the back right. Now I get it. I tend to get confused because these are just a U' away from the regular orientation so I didn't think of them us "from the back". For me from the back would have meant more like a U2 and doing it lefty like L U L' U L U2 L'. The lefty ones I am trying to include them in my 2x2 Ortega OLL repertoire to avoid the U2 but maybe this option will be faster because the alg is righty... have to try them out.
PLL recognition can be pretty quick. There's a system for looking at two sides, and knowing what PLL is involved. I'm not good at it, but I'm learning, as I pickup more PLL.
Yeah on 3x3 it's easy, I even wrote a guide for it a couple of years ago. On 4x4 you cannot recognise by two sides because of parity. The edges on the sides you can't see might be swapped. Looking at a third side and trying to conclude whether there is parity or not takes longer, at least for me. And then, if you spot parity, there is more than one PLL you could apply, and which is the shortest? Which one gives you opposite rather than adjacent parity?
Yeah, I did it for like 3-4 weeks in a row at the weekly comp and found it also to be fun. But right now I don't do much WC at all so... no more MTS. I think my best times were around 1:45 or so, with some variation of beginner's method.
Yeah on 3x3 it's easy, I even wrote a guide for it a couple of years ago. On 4x4 you cannot recognise by two sides because of parity. The edges on the sides you can't see might be swapped. Looking at a third side and trying to conclude whether there is parity or not takes longer, at least for me. And then, if you spot parity, there is more than one PLL you could apply, and which is the shortest? Which one gives you opposite rather than adjacent parity?
If I spot PLL parity, I just apply the opposite parity alg then solve the resulting PLL. Often times I can also choose my PLL with U or U' before the parity alg.
If I spot PLL parity, I just apply the opposite parity alg then solve the resulting PLL. Often times I can also choose my PLL with U or U' before the parity alg.
That's a better idea than being left with adjacent parity, but don't you need to do PLL recognition twice? Unless you are recognising the parity PLL case and you already know what case you'll get after the parity fix?
That's a better idea than being left with adjacent parity, but don't you need to do PLL recognition twice? Unless you are recognising the parity PLL case and you already know what case you'll get after the parity fix?
The second look is not as bad as a full look or even EPLL recognition. 2 sides, corner permutation and location of headlights are already known so you only really have to check one side. The second look is pretty instant and I think with practice you will always know which PLL is coming. Some of the time I consciously choose the PLL prior to parity; T-perm or F-perm is the easiest to spot. Executing the parity alg from the correct angle avoids F-perm and guarantees T-perm.
I just do beginner's because F2L is almost impossible to get my mind around it with the non-matching colours. I use this order:
- put two adjacent cross edges
- put the corner and then the edge in the middle of those edges.
- put next edge and f2l pair like above until f2l is complete
- orient edges with F sexy F' and derivatives
- permute edges with sune
- permute corners with some Niklas variation
- orient corners with beginner's method
I guess there's several ways you could approach it. I use regular old CFOP. It's a bit of a mind bender when you're so used to your colour scheme, but it's pretty fun.
- pick any face on the scrambled cube and make a cross to match
- match up each F2L pair and insert them one at a time
- map out where my "top" layer stickers are for my OLL pattern and execute the appropriate OLL alg. If it's one I don't know I do 2-look.
- permute corners with J/T/Y/A
- permute edges with U/Z/H
Hi everyone, long time no see again! I am the best at showing up for a few weeks and then disappearing for a few months. Sorry! I often read even if I don't get around to posting.
I read through a ton of pages on this thread though to get here So cool to see you are all progressing heaps and hello to the people that have come along since I was last here.
I still don't get tons of time to cube, maybe an hour or two per week, maybe double that on a good week. But I have bought a range of new puzzles and learned them all (so my 3x3 time is still not that great!) including 4x4, 5x5, skewb and I just got a Mega but haven't learnt the last layer yet.
But, I DID enter my first competition 2 weeks ago - Wellington Autumn 2016 here in NZ, so that's pretty cool. I finally have a WCA ID (2016TAYL04) and some official PBs. I decided to get as much flight time as possible an entered 2x2, 3x4, 4x4, pyraminx and... 3BLD. I only really started learning BLD a few weeks or so before the competition (I learnt the lettering scheme at the end of last year but then got new puzzles for xmas and left blind alone until recently), so I went into the competition just wanting a success, since very few people enter BLD here in NZ.
So here is a video with my best solves for each one:
All in all, I was totally worried about being nervous so I was aiming for sub-40 for 3x3, sub-15 for 2x2, sub-3:00 for 4x4, didn't care about pyra and wanted a BLD success. And I WAS really nervous in the first 3x3 round, so I messed up and got 36 second average, but I had a lot more experience under my belt by the second round and did much better.
Overall pretty happy with the results, and next comp I will be aiming for a much faster BLD time
It was such an easy scramble, you'll see in the video that I didn't expect it to be finished already so it could have easily been like a 3.xx, lol, but happy to have that one on record
It was such an easy scramble, you'll see in the video that I didn't expect it to be finished already so it could have easily been like a 3.xx, lol, but happy to have that one on record
Hi everyone, long time no see again! I am the best at showing up for a few weeks and then disappearing for a few months. Sorry! I often read even if I don't get around to posting.
I read through a ton of pages on this thread though to get here So cool to see you are all progressing heaps and hello to the people that have come along since I was last here.
I still don't get tons of time to cube, maybe an hour or two per week, maybe double that on a good week. But I have bought a range of new puzzles and learned them all (so my 3x3 time is still not that great!) including 4x4, 5x5, skewb and I just got a Mega but haven't learnt the last layer yet.
But, I DID enter my first competition 2 weeks ago - Wellington Autumn 2016 here in NZ, so that's pretty cool. I finally have a WCA ID (2016TAYL04) and some official PBs. I decided to get as much flight time as possible an entered 2x2, 3x4, 4x4, pyraminx and... 3BLD. I only really started learning BLD a few weeks or so before the competition (I learnt the lettering scheme at the end of last year but then got new puzzles for xmas and left blind alone until recently), so I went into the competition just wanting a success, since very few people enter BLD here in NZ.
So here is a video with my best solves for each one:
All in all, I was totally worried about being nervous so I was aiming for sub-40 for 3x3, sub-15 for 2x2, sub-3:00 for 4x4, didn't care about pyra and wanted a BLD success. And I WAS really nervous in the first 3x3 round, so I messed up and got 36 second average, but I had a lot more experience under my belt by the second round and did much better.
Overall pretty happy with the results, and next comp I will be aiming for a much faster BLD time
. I did look at the splits of several solves and concluded that my 3x3 stage is not that bad. The solve with Joey must have been an outlier.
