OreKehStrah
Member
Hey everyone, I've been thinking about this concept since summer, when I returned from my break from cubing. As I've gotten older I started thinking about methodology more and found that to be the most interesting thing in cubing for me. I was originally learning ZBLL, and thought, there's gotta be another way that could be better of an extension for CFOP. So I've been thinking about where CFOP could expand in the future and I think I might have a simple, but potentially really powerful (maybe) new technique. I'm sure others have thought of this, but I decided to make this post and discuss a lot of the benefits free slotting provides. But first a little bit more back story.
Recently everyone has been pretty hyped for the potential of psuedoslotting since Tymon popularized it, which lead me to a more refined idea of my original idea for expanding CFOP. I've been thinking about ways to expand CFOP based around doing different things during F2L, and I've been interested in TTLL since ZZ-CT was introduced, and I realized that TTLL could be a suitable expansion for CFOP. However, the problem is that this requires LL EO first.
That's the original motivation of Free Slotting, allowing TTLL to work with CFOP, but I realized it actually has a lot of utility in CFOP.
Let me now define what I'm calling Free Slotting.
Free slotting is making one of the four F2L pairs with either the F2L pair's edge and the correct corner, or a corner of the last layer such that the corner you pair with the F2L edge will have either a U or D color sticker on the D layer(Or in other words the corner is correctly orientated with the edge) . If you do free slotting on your final pair, instead of one pair, you actually have 5 different pairs you can make in the slot, which gives you a tremendous amount of freedom for that pair. You can form the normal F2L pair, or you can pair the edge with any of the other four last layer corners so that the last layer color of that corner is facing down/ is orientated. That way, after you insert the free slot pair, you can do "normal" OLL in that there are no new, weird OLL cases. You simply recognize normal OLL cases with a D layer corner color on the last layer if you pair the F2L edge with a last layer corner. In that case you then proceed to do TTLL instead of PLL, or just the standard CFOP last layer if you make the normal, standard pair. Because you are making pairs with LL corners instead of pairs with different F2L pieces by changing the D layer I'm calling this a cousin to psuedoslotting. The free slotting name is from the fact you are "free" to make a pair of your choice with 5 different corner-edge pairings, in any slot, at any time during F2L.
By intelligently choosing which of the five corners you use to make the free slot pair if its for the last slot, you can usually avoid rotations and/or orient some or all of your last layer edges, which can allow TTLL influencing via performing different CLL algs. You could also use the technique to do VLS more frequently. If in the future this really catches on, there could potentially be ZB-TTLL that solves everything after the free slot pair is made, provided LL edges are oriented like for ZBLL.
Plus, it's not too uncommon for an F2L edge to naturally pair with a LL corner that is oriented correctly, giving you a much higher chance at getting a completely free pair, meaning you only have to solve 3 pairs.
You can also do the free slot edge when it's not the last pair/slot to affect other F2L pairs to make the next pair easier or to do multislotting. You can also make the free slot pair first and it could make inspection easier since you only have to pair the F2L edge with a correctly oriented corner out of 5 different corners instead of the specific F2L corner the pair normally uses, so the planning could become easier/the solution to cross+1 becomes shorter, which could allow lookahead further into the solve during inspection.
The main drawback to the method/technique is simply having to learn TTLL, and the worst part about that is simply the algset isn't optimized yet. If more people start generating algs and work on improving the alg set this issue could be negated quite quickly IMO. TTLL is a lot easier to learn than ZBLL since it is less algs by a long shot, and has PLL style recognition. Other than this I see no real other drawbacks to this technique because at worse, it's the same amount of steps as doing OLL-PLL. It's essentially just a different kind of PLL at the end of the day.
In conclusion, there are a great multitude of benefits from free slotting I can think of currently, and I'm sure there's probably more I haven't though of yet.
These include: more flexibility in F2L since you can choose to form 5 different pairs for one slot, there's a greater chance that you can make a free slot pair using a very low movecount, you can avoid rotations by intelligently choosing which corner to pair with the F2L edge, you also can affect EO by making smart pairing choices,the chance to get a free pair drastically increases, the ability to positively affect other F2L pairs if you make your free slot pair when it is not in the last slot, and you can have potentially easier lookahead and planning during inspection since the first pair can have 5 different corner-edge parings.
I'd love to hear what the community thinks about this idea, and get feedback on it! I'd be especially interested in what Jayden M and Chris T think since Jayden makes a ton of intellectual videos about cubing and has a lot of good insight, and Chris since he pioneered TTLL.
Also I realize this is very similar to the Ribbon method, but I think the difference between just inserting the F2L edge with no regard to the corners orientation compared to making a pair so the edge is with an oriented corner is very minimal. I also believe that since making a pair where the corner is oriented usually is 1-4 moves extra than just inserting the edge, combined with the fact it saves you from learning a very large amount of TOLS algs, plus gives you a better ability to influence other F2L pairs or the LL makes CFOP with free slotting better than using Ribbon.
Recently everyone has been pretty hyped for the potential of psuedoslotting since Tymon popularized it, which lead me to a more refined idea of my original idea for expanding CFOP. I've been thinking about ways to expand CFOP based around doing different things during F2L, and I've been interested in TTLL since ZZ-CT was introduced, and I realized that TTLL could be a suitable expansion for CFOP. However, the problem is that this requires LL EO first.
That's the original motivation of Free Slotting, allowing TTLL to work with CFOP, but I realized it actually has a lot of utility in CFOP.
Let me now define what I'm calling Free Slotting.
Free slotting is making one of the four F2L pairs with either the F2L pair's edge and the correct corner, or a corner of the last layer such that the corner you pair with the F2L edge will have either a U or D color sticker on the D layer(Or in other words the corner is correctly orientated with the edge) . If you do free slotting on your final pair, instead of one pair, you actually have 5 different pairs you can make in the slot, which gives you a tremendous amount of freedom for that pair. You can form the normal F2L pair, or you can pair the edge with any of the other four last layer corners so that the last layer color of that corner is facing down/ is orientated. That way, after you insert the free slot pair, you can do "normal" OLL in that there are no new, weird OLL cases. You simply recognize normal OLL cases with a D layer corner color on the last layer if you pair the F2L edge with a last layer corner. In that case you then proceed to do TTLL instead of PLL, or just the standard CFOP last layer if you make the normal, standard pair. Because you are making pairs with LL corners instead of pairs with different F2L pieces by changing the D layer I'm calling this a cousin to psuedoslotting. The free slotting name is from the fact you are "free" to make a pair of your choice with 5 different corner-edge pairings, in any slot, at any time during F2L.
By intelligently choosing which of the five corners you use to make the free slot pair if its for the last slot, you can usually avoid rotations and/or orient some or all of your last layer edges, which can allow TTLL influencing via performing different CLL algs. You could also use the technique to do VLS more frequently. If in the future this really catches on, there could potentially be ZB-TTLL that solves everything after the free slot pair is made, provided LL edges are oriented like for ZBLL.
Plus, it's not too uncommon for an F2L edge to naturally pair with a LL corner that is oriented correctly, giving you a much higher chance at getting a completely free pair, meaning you only have to solve 3 pairs.
You can also do the free slot edge when it's not the last pair/slot to affect other F2L pairs to make the next pair easier or to do multislotting. You can also make the free slot pair first and it could make inspection easier since you only have to pair the F2L edge with a correctly oriented corner out of 5 different corners instead of the specific F2L corner the pair normally uses, so the planning could become easier/the solution to cross+1 becomes shorter, which could allow lookahead further into the solve during inspection.
The main drawback to the method/technique is simply having to learn TTLL, and the worst part about that is simply the algset isn't optimized yet. If more people start generating algs and work on improving the alg set this issue could be negated quite quickly IMO. TTLL is a lot easier to learn than ZBLL since it is less algs by a long shot, and has PLL style recognition. Other than this I see no real other drawbacks to this technique because at worse, it's the same amount of steps as doing OLL-PLL. It's essentially just a different kind of PLL at the end of the day.
In conclusion, there are a great multitude of benefits from free slotting I can think of currently, and I'm sure there's probably more I haven't though of yet.
These include: more flexibility in F2L since you can choose to form 5 different pairs for one slot, there's a greater chance that you can make a free slot pair using a very low movecount, you can avoid rotations by intelligently choosing which corner to pair with the F2L edge, you also can affect EO by making smart pairing choices,the chance to get a free pair drastically increases, the ability to positively affect other F2L pairs if you make your free slot pair when it is not in the last slot, and you can have potentially easier lookahead and planning during inspection since the first pair can have 5 different corner-edge parings.
I'd love to hear what the community thinks about this idea, and get feedback on it! I'd be especially interested in what Jayden M and Chris T think since Jayden makes a ton of intellectual videos about cubing and has a lot of good insight, and Chris since he pioneered TTLL.
Also I realize this is very similar to the Ribbon method, but I think the difference between just inserting the F2L edge with no regard to the corners orientation compared to making a pair so the edge is with an oriented corner is very minimal. I also believe that since making a pair where the corner is oriented usually is 1-4 moves extra than just inserting the edge, combined with the fact it saves you from learning a very large amount of TOLS algs, plus gives you a better ability to influence other F2L pairs or the LL makes CFOP with free slotting better than using Ribbon.