Opposite Color Extended Cross Solving

[dChan]

Chris Hardwick's X-cross page is very interesting. It talks of solutions to the X-Cross and also talks of opposite color side solving which makes perfect sense. I have always been solving on green and occasionally I solve blue first and get a similar time to my regular solve method. Opposite cross solving is perfect for those of us with the Ideal Toys color setup with similar colors on opposite sides of each other because it is not that much harder to get used to. And the extended cross is ideal as well because when mastered it can be done in 8-moves leaving only 4 c/e pairs!. Plus it gives you more room to maneuver the c/e pair together when you do the X-cross at the start than when you do the c/e pair after your cross is finished.

Edit: Oops, please chose only 1 answer to the poll!

 

[doubleyou]

I sounds very interesting! I remember reading about those approaches a while back. I didnt understand much and didnt find any use of it.. maybe its time.. dunno

I think you made a mistake tho. if I remember right then the extended cross leaves you with only three c/e pairs to solve right? thats the point of the extended cross..

 

[Erik]

I use opposite color and X-Cross.
Opposite color is very easy after a short time of practise.

 

[dChan]

Originally posted by doubleyou@May 15 2007, 11:39 AM
I sounds very interesting! I remember reading about those approaches a while back. I didnt understand much and didnt find any use of it.. maybe its time.. dunno

I think you made a mistake tho. if I remember right then the extended cross leaves you with only three c/e pairs to solve right? thats the point of the extended cross..

OOPS, that was dumb of me to say, lol. The whole point of X-cross is to get more done, lol. I put "4" c/e pairs. Sorry about that, thanks for telling me.

Erik: Is your x-cross down to 8-moves on average? Is 12 moves good for it too or am I wasting too much moves? I am reading Hardwick's tutorial and am trying to get it down to 8 but my closest was 10...

 

[Erik]

I don't have any idea of the number of moves...

 

[pjk]

If you can solve the x-cross in 12 moves and have that all planned out during the pre-inspection, then that is excellent. That means you should be able to have the cross and 1 ce pair done in around 4 seconds or so (or even less if you can go quicker), which is pretty good.

 

[dChan]

Yeah, but doesn't that waste moves still? Well I guess moves doesn't really mater when you are speedsolving. But wouldn't it be faster if you did 8 smart moves(easier path, smoother flow of moves) than 12 dumb ones?

 

[joey]

For me, I use go for x-crosses when I see it. I don't do it every solve, just when it strikes me as a simple set of moves.

 

[pjk]

I'm in the same set as Joey.

dChan, well, if you can find the x-cross with 15 second inspection, then go for it and be able to execute it faster than normal since you should already know the sequence of moves. 12 moves is quite a bit, but they are 12 moves you already know what to do, rather than looking and solving. 12 moves should be 3-4 seconds for an x-cross... not bad.