Random Blindfold Cubing Discussion

An example solve for 5-style edges:

Scramble: D2 B' F U2 R2 F' U2 R2 F R2 U2 R U L R' B' U F D2 L2 F'

[D R L': U' M' U2 M U' M' U2 M U2]
[Bw: U M U2 M U M' U2 M' U M' U M]
x2 [F: [U' R U, M2]]

39 stm, very efficient compared to 79 stm with M2, and a little less than 50 stm for 3-style. It would be even more efficient if it was all 5-cycles and not 2 5-cycles plus a 3-cycle at the end.

That is crazy! How did you come up with that? I didn't even know that 5-style was usable. Can you use that for any solve or only for a few cases?
Are there any resources explaining it? Even google only links me to this page when i search for 5-style BLD.
 
That is crazy! How did you come up with that? I didn't even know that 5-style was usable. Can you use that for any solve or only for a few cases?
Are there any resources explaining it? Even google only links me to this page when i search for 5-style BLD.

Cale S's example is a bit of a cheat because the first cycle contains 2x fast 3-style algs, U' M' U2 M U' and M' U2 M U2 (leads onto my next point.) The second alg isn't too bad.

Oleg Gritsenko (DrKorbin) generated a complete list of M,U 5-cycles, I think he said there was a 1/66 chance of getting one in a 3BLD solve (I'm probably wrong, but it's in that region.) And a lot of these are combinations of 2x3-cycles with cancellations, so learning the '5-cycles' of these might not be that worthwhile. Setups to the 4/5/6 movers and stuff like [R2 F2 R2 U']*2 might be viable too.
 
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That is crazy! How did you come up with that? I didn't even know that 5-style was usable. Can you use that for any solve or only for a few cases?
Are there any resources explaining it? Even google only links me to this page when i search for 5-style BLD.
I can't actually use any in solves (unless I learned the easy 4 move ones like M U M' U'), but I used 5-cycles from here along with setup moves. As long as the 5 edges in the cycle are in positions affected by M/U moves, the 5-cycle is solvable in <M,U>. Even if someone learned all those cases, I think it would be too complicated and require way too much thinking to actually be faster than methods we have now.
 
Thanks, i had a look at that file and it's pretty long indeed. It's really interesting but yes i also imagine that it would be too difficult to use in a real speedsolve. I might learn a few cases some day, hoping to encounter one in a solve, but i first need to improve with my current method.
 
I just watched Maskow's Multi BLD WR and I have to say, Multi BLD is something I'm looking forward to. Unfortunately, I can't blindsolve, but my exams finish on the 18th and then I hope to change that. So, I am stoked for the road ahead.
 
I have a question that sounds a bit silly, but I mean it seriously. Do you recommend investing enough time in BLD to get good at it? A ridiculously high percentage of people who invest a lot of time and energy in BLD appear to just get burnt out on it. They/you seem to have much more of a problem with it than speedsolvers. In your opinion, is BLD too difficult, frustrating, or mentally taxing to be sustainably fun? Daniel Sheppard, Roman, Marcell, now you, and other great solvers that predate my time in the cubing community or that I haven't heard of have simply quit. I'm interested in BLD. It seems to me like something that's a great challenge, and something that I could get good at, but I don't want to do it if I'm likely to destroy my interest in cubing by doing so. I have no qualms about learning to solve a cube blindfolded; that's a pretty small committment, and would be satisfying. But practicing BLD a lot seems different. I've done some mental calculation, and it's exhausting, and the only reason I enjoy it is because I'm decent at it. I can imagine BLD being very similar in that regard. Assuming that I'm correctly interpreting the reasons for a bunch of BLD solvers quitting, do you think it's worth it?

In my experience there is a big difference between being outwardly competitive and being inwardly competitive. Some examples of being outwardly competitive would be phrases like "I want to beat you", "I want to podium", "I want to be in the top 10 of _____", etc.. Some examples of being inwardly competitive would be phrases like "I want to get a result that is within 10% of my competition personal best time or better", "I want to get a faster/better time/result than I got last year/two years ago/last time I competed", "I want to have a BLD success rate of at least X% at my next competition", etc..

In my own personal experience, being outwardly competitive sucks. It's stressful, you develop rivalries with people (even if they're only minor ones), and when someone who you've set your sights on beating does better than you, you feel worse about yourself. Being inwardly competitive, for me, was a way for me to enjoy cubing more while still being successful from an outwardly competitive perspective. Set lofty, but reachable, goals for yourself using inwardly competitive phrases. If you don't meet your goals, there's always a next time. And if someone beats you (ranks higher than you, bumps you off the podium, whatever) that has no bearing on whether or not you met your, inwardly competitively worded, goal.

I'm not saying it's the best approach for everyone, but it works very well for me.

Do you want to practice BLD cubing because you want to be good at BLD from an outwardly competitive perspective? Or do you want to practice BLD because you think it's fun, and you'd like the satisfaction of setting and surpassing inwardly competitive goals you will set for yourself? Perhaps a bit of both?

You can be good at BLD from an outwardly competitive perspective even if you practice setting inwardly competitive goals. That's my point. I think it's a good way to be competitive while also continuing to have fun at the same time.
 
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Being inwardly competitive is important I think but at least for me so is being outwardly competitive.

For example the most important thing for me in competitions is to get good results compared to my skill level. It doesn't matter that much if I podium or not. And obviously outside competitions it's my own inner motivation that makes me practise because I like (BLD)cubing.

BUT I can't say that Ville's NRs aren't motivating me to improve and practise especially now that I'm SO close to those times...
Also I had never tried MBLD before Olli Vikstedt did 8/9 NR @ Euro2014. After that I have went from never attempting to getting 17/17 score. And this saturday my goal at Finnish championships is to get at least 13 points and new NR...

For me it's a nice mix of both outward and inward competitiveness :)
 
Hello, I want to learn how some cubers keep track of their results for BLD. For a long time, I have not kept records of my times. I would only keep track of my current PB's and try to improve them. Is there a significant benefit to tracking the improvement? The reason that I didn't document all of my solves is mostly due to laziness.

Also, what would be some beneficial information to document? For example, memorization time and the overall time seem essential, but should I also type the type of mistakes on the DNFs? or the letter pair that I forget/ the alg mistake? For MBLD, I memorize packs of 5 cubes, do people usually document the splits for each pack? There are other factors that may also be important to like time, date, amount of sleep that day, a daily training log summary, what I eat, etc. Does most of this sound like a good idea or not?

The last thing I would be interested is if people use excel or notebooks/word processors, to keep track of results.
 
Hello, I want to learn how some cubers keep track of their results for BLD.

Overall time and memo time for PBs in an Excel sheet, along with PBs for other events in a reasonably messy layout.

For MBLD, I keep track of both the best and fastest (regardless of score) attempts at each number of cubes (so both 9/9 25:50 and 8/9 25:41), and have formulae to calculate time per cube, memo per cube, execution per cube and points. It highlights my overall PB and any statistics which are better in an attempt with more cubes (e.g. 49.95 exec average for 5/5 is highlighted since I have 48.32 exec average in my best 7/7). I only track best overall time, not attempts with best memo or best execution. I'll upload if there's interest but there's probably better organised results on offer.

I also have how many pieces I DNF'd by on my best (and so far only) 7BLD attempt, which I would also do for any other puzzle as needed.
 
In one of my recent official 3BLD solves, I accidentally did a move immediately after uncovering the puzzle. Then I undid the move and continued with the solve. Fortunately I wasn't successful so it was a DNF regardless of the acccidental turn I made.

Now I'm wondering: Is it possible to benefit from doing one move before you start memorization? What about 2 or maybe even 3 moves etc... ?

I guess if one of your buffers is already solved, maybe it would be better to do a move to replace it with an unsolved piece?
 
In one of my recent official 3BLD solves, I accidentally did a move immediately after uncovering the puzzle. Then I undid the move and continued with the solve. Fortunately I wasn't successful so it was a DNF regardless of the acccidental turn I made.

Now I'm wondering: Is it possible to benefit from doing one move before you start memorization? What about 2 or maybe even 3 moves etc... ?

I guess if one of your buffers is already solved, maybe it would be better to do a move to replace it with an unsolved piece?

I'm sure it 'could' be beneficial to make a move or two before memo but I'm sure you'd waste more time looking for a 'good' move than the time you would save from this move anyway.
 
If you saw that doing one single move would result in all corners being solved, would you memorise the cube based on what it looks like after the move is done?
 
I read the last few posts, then did a BLD solve, and got a scramble where doing one move solves four pieces:
4. 3:39.38+ U' F2 U' L2 U' L2 D2 F2 U2 L' D' R2 U B F2 U' L2 D' L'
If you do a L', the scramble is much easier. I tried doing this, and found didn't find it gave me much problem when memorising. However, my memo is very slow, and I think that when going quickly it could be easy to make a mistake - I almost did. I think there was a discussion about this before, but I can't remember what people said...
 
In one of my recent official 3BLD solves, I accidentally did a move immediately after uncovering the puzzle. Then I undid the move and continued with the solve. Fortunately I wasn't successful so it was a DNF regardless of the acccidental turn I made.

Now I'm wondering: Is it possible to benefit from doing one move before you start memorization? What about 2 or maybe even 3 moves etc... ?

I guess if one of your buffers is already solved, maybe it would be better to do a move to replace it with an unsolved piece?
You could also memorize your corners quickly to see if you have parity, and do one quarter turn if you did to get rid of parity.
 
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