I think you just need to break it in. Mine felt like that at first too, but it got smoother after some solves.
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One-Answer 4x4 Question Thread
- Thread starter pjk
- Start date
I think you just need to break it in. Mine felt like that at first too, but it got smoother after some solves.
One Wheel
Legend
Yep, edge pairing isn't finished. Pair the red-yellow edges and the green-yellow edges, and you'll find out if you need OLL or PLL parity.https://imgur.com/a/v6IHX Follow up image from my question
SolveThatCube
Veteran
Nah I don't think it's that. I've done at least 800 solves on it.
SolveThatCube
Veteran
After you have solved the centers and the 4 cross edges, you need to pair up every edge piece with its respective partner. Then you can solve it like a 3x3.
One Wheel
Legend
There are algs to more efficiently solve the last couple of edges in certain cases, but yes, they're not going to magically solve themselves, you need to solve them.
AndrewKimmey
Regular
Does anyone know the 4x4 OLL pairty that Kevin hays showed in his Tuesday tips episode 21? It's really similar to the standard oll parity alg, but it doesn't swap the 2 dedges adjacent to line of 4 pieces that get flipped. He didn't list the alg, and I can't reconstruct it very well from the video. @1:45
I think it's r2 B2 r' U2 r' U2 x' U2 r' U2 r U2 r' U2 r2 U2. Lowercase = wide
AndrewKimmey
Regular
Um I'm not quite sure... is that alg typed correctly? It only does a good job of scrambling the cube randomly for me.
One Wheel
Legend
It works for me. Are you possibly doing x instead of x'? Those are easy to mess up. An F2 on the end lines everything up when you're starting with a solved cube. As a side note, I just noticed that if you do it with slice moves instead of wide moves it does both OLL and PLL parity. I'm gonna have to learn that alg.
AndrewKimmey
Regular
Hey, there we go! I think that'sit actually, thanks! I'm pretty sure it was the x'. You'd think that by now I'd actually have rotation notation down pat haha *facepalm* Thank you
Duncan Bannon
Veteran
I have a competing in 2 months. I average 2:00 to 2:15 on 4x4 and cutoff is 1:30. I use Reduction into 4LLL. Is it worth is to register for it? How difficult would it be to get a solve under cutoff? Thanks
How long have you been practising 444 so far and what's your 333 average? (If you've been practising for like a month and average 2 minutes, there's a high chance you can get faster in the next two months, but if you've been practising for a year and still average 2 minutes, becoming sub-1:30 in two months is a tall order.)
Duncan Bannon
Veteran
About 2.5 weeks. I average 20-23 on 3x3. Thanks.
Methinks you should go for it. Given your 333 average, a 1:20-1:30 average on 444 should be doable if you practise a lot.
Learn Yau and start learning full PLL (for 333). If you know full PLL, recognising PLL parity becomes easier and that might shave a second or two, in addition to saving 2-4 seconds just from one-look PLL.
Mr.Roux86
Regular
If you don't want to read all of this watch this video
But I recommend reading this if you are interested in this topic.
The other day I was trying to see if a 4x4 could be solved with an "F3L" + oll and pll. Now I don't know either alg set so I was just doing F *trigger* F' a bunch of times. I eventually reduced the 4x4 state to only two edges swapped (those edges were ({0,3} and {2,0}) if we are thinking of the top layer as a coordinate plane, also the video link above has images of the cube. Keep in mind, the cube is completely solved besides these two pieces). I thought "this is cool I wonder if I have discovered something new about the 4x4." So I decided to do the ol' scramble the cube and if you can solve it then you know this case is possible test, and it worked. So that's cool. I guess that it is possible to swap only two edges on a 4x4. I am not good at making algs, so I can't give you an alg to create this case. You can just remove pieces and move them around. I don't think that this might be useful for speedsolving, but it is interesting as on a 3x3 we can only cycle 3 edges at the least. I think you can also swap 2 centers big cubes. If anyone knows more about this, or this was already discovered/isn't relevant. Please reply I would like to know more.
The other day I was trying to see if a 4x4 could be solved with an "F3L" + oll and pll. Now I don't know either alg set so I was just doing F *trigger* F' a bunch of times. I eventually reduced the 4x4 state to only two edges swapped (those edges were ({0,3} and {2,0}) if we are thinking of the top layer as a coordinate plane, also the video link above has images of the cube. Keep in mind, the cube is completely solved besides these two pieces). I thought "this is cool I wonder if I have discovered something new about the 4x4." So I decided to do the ol' scramble the cube and if you can solve it then you know this case is possible test, and it worked. So that's cool. I guess that it is possible to swap only two edges on a 4x4. I am not good at making algs, so I can't give you an alg to create this case. You can just remove pieces and move them around. I don't think that this might be useful for speedsolving, but it is interesting as on a 3x3 we can only cycle 3 edges at the least. I think you can also swap 2 centers big cubes. If anyone knows more about this, or this was already discovered/isn't relevant. Please reply I would like to know more.
CarterK
Veteran
This is called parity. It's just a property of big cubes. As for centers, you can't switch 2 centers, but you can do a 3cycle of pieces so that it looks like you switched 2 centers.
One Wheel
Legend
I don't entirely understand the math, but I'm reasonably certain that it's impossible to switch two pieces. It is possible to do a double swap where one of the pairs that you swap is center pieces that, from a solved position, are indistinguishable. Of course on even-layered cubes it is also possible to do a double swap where one of the pairs is hidden, as in a T-perm on a 2x2.
So the short answer is that no, it's not possible to switch two pieces on a 4x4, but it is possible to appear to switch two pieces, and when you do that's called parity.
Wrong. It's possible to swap two edge pieces on a 4×4×4 without swapping anything else. (Fun fact: this is the case for 4×4×4, but on larger even-order cubes, it's not possible to swap just two edge pieces while leaving all the centres and corners intact. Proof is left as an exercise for the reader.)
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