One-Answer Square-1 Question Thread

[the dnf master]

I bought two yuxin little magic square-1's and they both stripped within 100 solves. Also they felt like a cheap toy and they had crap cornercutting (worse than the volt v2 for me)

Weird, I did about 400 solves with it and my cube is still working well

 

[SH03L4C3]

I bought two yuxin little magic square-1's and they both stripped within 100 solves. Also they felt like a cheap toy and they had crap cornercutting (worse than the volt v2 for me)

well, $10 is cheap for a fully magnetic squan.
I main XMD Volt

 

[Sitina]

I‘m beginner for Vandenbergh. I heard that you can learn like only 15 ep for a beginner. Then what do you do about the other cases and those with parity?

 

[the dnf master]

I‘m beginner for Vandenbergh. I heard that you can learn like only 15 ep for a beginner. Then what do you do about the other cases and those with parity?

Just do two-look EP. Learn the U, H, and Z perms and the parity alg as well as some other easy cases, and I believe that should solve every EP case in a solve using at most two algs.

 

[Thom S.]

Are there any videos of people executing algorithms very fast like there are compilations in 3x3?

 

[Eli Apperson]

Is CP+EP enough to get fast on square 1? Or do you need to learn PBL

 

[the dnf master]

Is CP+EP enough to get fast on square 1? Or do you need to learn PBL

what is your definition of "fast"

 

[Eli Apperson]

what is your definition of "fast"

Idk. Sub 8-9?

 

[Thom S.]

Is CP+EP enough to get fast on square 1? Or do you need to learn PBL

Most definitely. Full EP can be quite fast. If you can, learn all the PBL Cases that get solved with two CP algorithms. I didn't and now my recognition system doesn't allow for it.

 

[Eli Apperson]

What EP's should I learn? I've learned all of EO CO and CP an I'm not really sure what to learn next.

 

[Thom S.]

By Brandon Lin covers a lot of the easy cases. I'd also recommend learning all the EPLLs

 

[LBr]

Is CP+EP enough to get fast on square 1? Or do you need to learn PBL

there is no way you need to know obl/pbl, you can be decently fast with adj/adj and opp/opp only on vandenbergh. But you need to go straight into your second adj/adj if you want to be good. For my U perms, I do adj/adj twice as it is the same number of slices as other U perms anyway

 

[Cubing Forever]

Idk. Sub 8-9?

Then you'd probably need OBL-PBL(according to what I've heard from top squan people)

 

[ProStar]

Not sure where to put this question.

I was mindlessly turning my YuXin Little Magic M squan (trying to scramble it; I'm new to squan) when the cube just completely exploded in my hands. Like, crumbled right before me. I definitely could've tried to make an impossible move, but I was 100% not forcing enough to cause something like that. I've now reassembled it but it seems that there may be something missing in the core? Basically it falls apart whenever I try to turn it, and I'm assuming it's not connected in the core. Does anyone know what possibly could've happened? I can't find anything else that fell out of the puzzle but there very well could be something I didn't see considering stuff went everywhere

 

[Thom S.]

Basically it falls apart whenever I try to turn it, and I'm assuming it's not connected in the core.

Youxin Little Magic Sq1s use a Nylon nut(which is borderline criminal for a premium Sq1 because we know that's a bad idea for at least 9 years now), or at least the two I own do. The threads on these strip out after some time, which would explain why it exploded and continues to do so.
Of course, without pictures, that can only be a guess. Maybe the nut just unsrewed and you lost it?
If one of these happened, your best guess would be to buy a proper locknut. I'll check tomorrow, but cube manufacturers somehow are keen on using imperial screws(which is completely idiotical but I won't get into why) and I don't know if the Planet mars stocks metric or imperial nuts in their hardware stores.

 

[ProStar]

Youxin Little Magic Sq1s use a Nylon nut(which is borderline criminal for a premium Sq1 because we know that's a bad idea for at least 9 years now), or at least the two I own do. The threads on these strip out after some time, which would explain why it exploded and continues to do so.
Of course, without pictures, that can only be a guess. Maybe the nut just unsrewed and you lost it?
If one of these happened, your best guess would be to buy a proper locknut. I'll check tomorrow, but cube manufacturers somehow are keen on using imperial screws(which is completely idiotical but I won't get into why) and I don't know if the Planet mars stocks metric or imperial nuts in their hardware stores.

Yeah, it looks like something happened to the nut. I can’t tell if it’s stripped or if the puzzle was just too loose. I’ve put the puzzle back together and tightened it and it appears to be fine, but we’ll see if it still happens once I start solving.

What are the best (preferably not too overpriced) squans on the market right now? Preferably ones that don’t have such issues

 

[Thom S.]

Yeah, it looks like something happened to the nut. I can’t tell if it’s stripped or if the puzzle was just too loose. I’ve put the puzzle back together and tightened it and it appears to be fine, but we’ll see if it still happens once I start solving.

What are the best (preferably not too overpriced) squans on the market right now? Preferably ones that don’t have such issues

From what I've gathered, the community either uses YLM or the Volt V2.
The YLM gets praise without end, I hate it. Almost unusable. So I use the Volt V2, which I can safely say comes with a proper locknut.

 

[Renslay]

https://alpha.twizzle.net/ is a nice software to visualize the 3x3 and similar puzzles, but the Square-1 implementation does not look nice.
Is there a website that shows the Square-1 in 3D, and also supports copy-pasting algorithms to replay them?

 

[Renslay]

I need people to identify this method, because I couldn't find anything similar.
I learned this from someone I can't really remember (maybe it was Milán Baticz? It was 15-20 years ago...).

It is beginner method for SQ-1, but it's a great method, low alg count yet quite efficient. I can do below 1 min average, and with an easy cube shape and no parity, I can go as low as 30 sec, and I'm not even practicing SQ-1 regularly.

Step 1: cube shape.
Standard stuff, a beginner might want to collect all edges in an 8-0 or a 7-1 configuration, and bring back the cube from there.

Step 2: solve bottom corners.
Intuitive and easy; the "hardest case" is inserting the last corner with R2 U R2 U' R2 (but in SQ-1), but that can be avoided in a lot of cases.

Step: solve 2 adjacent bottom edges.
One alg here: (1,0)/ (-1,-1)/ basically acts like an M2 move on the edges.

Step 3: orient edges.
3 cases here, but for a beginner one is enough: swap UR and DR edges:
(0,-1)/ (0,3)/ (0,3)/ (1,1)/ (-1,-4)/ (0,-3)/
I know one more alg, for the case where UL, UB, DB, DR are misoriented:
(1,0)/ (-3,0)/ (-1,-1)/ (4,1)/
The last case is: L shape bottom, I shape top misoriented edge: I just do an "M2" move, and I'll get the first case.

After this, the bottom layer is either solved, or almost solved (with 2 adjacent edges swapped); but that's okay, see Step 5.

Step 4: permute top corners.
2 cases here, one is enough for a beginner: swap UFR and UBR corners:
/ (-3,0)/ (3,0)/ (3,-3)/ (3,0)/ (-3,0)/
But the diagonal swap is also easy to learn:
/ (3,3)/ (3,0)/ (3,3)/ (3,0)/ (3,3)/

Step 5: permute edges (minus parity).
There is a short alg that swaps DL-DF, and UF-UR edges:
(1,0)/ (0,3)/ (-1,-1)/ (1,-2)/
With this we can permute the top edges in any way: for the top, we adjust U moves, while on the bottom we always permute the same two edges (that's why it didn't matter if they were already swapped after Step 3).
This alg is enough to solve the top (and the bottom) layers with some repetition of this single short algorithm; apart from parity.
But I also recommend to learn Ua and Ub edge permutation: they are fairly easy and fast, and helps greatly: almost every case can be solved with 2 algs in Step 5!

Step 6: parity and middle layer fix.
Standard stuff, not gonna detail here. I use a single parity alg. But since it's quite long, for a beginner there is a way: "break the cube form, bring it back in an other way". If you do it in the right way, the SQ-1 will be in a mixed up cube form; but parity will be guaranteed to be gone.