Random Blindfold Cubing Discussion

[riffz]

I have it prepared for the English and Greek alphabets. It helps to separate edge and corner memo since I use different alphabets for each.

That's really cool! I wish I knew another language...

 

[bobthegiraffemonkey]

That's really cool! I wish I knew another language...

Thanks . I don't know a single word of Greek, but from maths/science I already knew quite a few letters of the alphabet, so it seemed an obvious choice. It really isn't hard to learn, especially for all you people memorising letter pair lists with hundreds of entries.

 

[qqwref]

Do you have any trouble distinguishing similar English and Greek letters, such as I/iota, A/alpha, T/tau, and so on?

 

[pi.cubed]

Thanks Ryan. I'd seen Dairy Queen on your list before but I wasn't sure how to visualise it. Thanks. I'll use Dairy Queen and I'll stick to GQ too. After taking another look at your list I saw Quaker Oats for QO and I think I'll borrow that too. Thanks for your 'collection of letter pair lists' thread btw Ryan, it's been really helpful.
I will go with 'Nerf Quarterback' (the nerf football) for NQ. I might get it confused with soccer ball but I'll see how I go.

I'm down to 4 now. I am doing more Xs, and I have noticed that most people's Xs are packed with electrocuted stuff. If any of you have lists like this, how do you visualise the electrocuted animals and make them different to the normal versions?

These are my remaining ones. Any ideas or tips?
Letter PairFilling up space...Current possibility
NX
UJ
VH Filling up space........ Van Helsing (not sure how to visualise well)
VJ Filling up space........ Vijay Singh (might work, but I'm not sure)

Also Ryan, on your thread, some ones that were missing from the last list you posted you then found but didn't say what they were. What did you end up using for UJ and VJ?

Thanks all.

edit: This post is kind of old to edit with new content, but I don't really have much new to say and the major thing I'm looking for now is how to visualise the electrocuted stuff, so this post is sufficient.

From bobthegirrafemonkey's below post (thanks!) I got NX and VH (I'm not sure what hoovering is, but as long as I remember that Vileplume is VH I'll be fine). I have never really been into Pokemon but I have found after google imaging some Pokemon that they are very unusual and distinct images, making them memorable. Ursaring looks a lot like a bear so I'll probably get that confused.
I will use Vijay Singh for VJ (thanks Mike)
That means apart from Xs, I have 1 left: UJ.
The Xs I actually don't need atm, since right now I will be using the list for M2/OP 3x3, so I only need 22 letters.

Thanks.

 

[bobthegiraffemonkey]

Do you have any trouble distinguishing similar English and Greek letters, such as I/iota, A/alpha, T/tau, and so on?

I did a little when I just visualised the letters, but it's easily fixed by choosing certain differences between them to focus on to make them easily distinct. By far the most similar is O/omicron, so I somewhat arbitrarily ended up making omicron appear as a subscript. That obviously became redundant when I switched to images I could associate with the letters (usually either a similar sounding word, or by using the shape), rather than the letters themselves. Does anyone else use foreign letters, or at least know a foreign alphabet which gives them the option? I'm curious.

Also, if anyone looking for letter pairs is pretty familiar with Pokemon, I can easily let you know what I use for several particular pairs. For example, I'll use pi.cubed's remaining pairs, although they might not even be of use to him:
NX: Ninetales using an axe (one gripped in each tail should work well)
UJ: Ursaring jiggling
VH: Vileplume hoovering (I know the correct word is vacuuming, but it still works)
VJ: Vileplume jiggling

 

[Mike Hughey]

VJ Filling up space........ Vijay Singh (might work, but I'm not sure)

For those who aren't sure about Vijay Singh - the reason he works so well for me is because he's usually belly-putting, which is rather easy to remember.

 

[pi.cubed]

I have used bobthegiraffemonkey's, Mike's, my sister's (lol) and my suggestions to finish all except XN and XO. Any suggestions? Advice on visualising electrocuted animals/objects and make them different to the regular versions would be equally as useful.

Thanks heaps for all suggestions so far.
Thanks.

 

[RyanReese09]

UJ is Mount Fuji. I just visualize a mountain (if doing images)
VJ I use that person Vijay or whatever.
NX I use my IRL friend Owen Nixon.

 

[riffz]

NX - Next Paintball (just picture a guy in full paintball garb with a gun)

I'm not sure if you have Next where you live, though.

 

[toastman]

I have used bobthegiraffemonkey's, Mike's, my sister's (lol) and my suggestions to finish all except XN and XO. Any suggestions? Advice on visualising electrocuted animals/objects and make them different to the regular versions would be equally as useful.

Thanks heaps for all suggestions so far.
Thanks.

XeN - A Crappy MP3 player
XeNon - a blue neon sign
XaNthum gum - a food additive, low-carb sweetener.

XO - XO Sauce (Cantonese style seafood sauce, Google image search, normally comes in a distintive octaconal shaped bottle. Yes, they call it X-O Sauce. (Ecks - oh - sauce)
XO - XO Brandy. Google image search, a brandy bottle is a distinctive shape, usually different to e.g. a bourbon or scotch bottle.

(Trivia, from wikipedia : "The name XO sauce comes from fine XO (extra-old) cognac, which is a popular Western liquor in Hong Kong and considered by many to be a chic product there. In addition the term XO is often used in the popular culture of Hong Kong to denote high quality, prestige, and luxury. In fact, XO sauce has been marketed in the same manner as the French liquor, using packaging of similar colour schemes.[1]

In Hong Kong English, "XO" is pronounced "ix-oh" /ˌɪks ˈoʊ/ instead of "ex-oh" /ˌɛks ˈoʊ/.")

 

[bobthegiraffemonkey]

View attachment Memo stuff.zip

So, minime12358 requested my letter pair list, and I've been wanting to post it anyway. I've mentioned before here how it mostly works, but a few other pointers:
- PBD pieces, I use one of the letters for the piece as the first letter, then an appropriate description. You can, alternatively, use a sticker cycle (like UF -> FU) and eliminate these descriptions, or perhaps some other system.
- I use floating buffers for big cube centers, but only ones from the U face. I therefore insert an image for when I setup a new piece to my buffer location.
- I apologise that some of it is a little obscure. Mostly, there is some connection my head between the letter/number and the images, although some of them are strange and you may wish to create your own versions. Some were just a little random and arbitrary (like for a single letter, I honesty have no idea about that).
- It may require good knowledge of Pokemon to fully follow it, though you can just as easily use people and/or animals (my descriptions are not designed for inanimate objects).
- It seems to be a good method to add crazy stuff to, so if you have any ideas about random stuff to aid memo that you want to add, go for it. One that I just realised that I didn't add is a notice that I have memo'd a flipped piece or easy separate 3-cycle or similar visually, and include a Mr I (enemy in Super Mario 64 which looks like an eye, works well as most of my routes are from that game).

Now for my audio system. I originally had one syllable per corner sticker, but it wasn't good. Now, I have one sound per sticker (in theory, I haven't practiced it much yet), which I can combine into 'words' (usually not actual words) on the fly. Sometimes it still sort of results in one syllable per sticker in awkward cases, but it can also have 2 or 3 stickers per syllable, and I've been using 4 stickers per 'word'. Some of the sounds are vowels, some are consonants. Generally, alternating between the two is easy and gives a good flow, while vowel -> vowel or consonant -> consonant does not always flow well (although sometimes it works nicely). In those cases, I have one set vowel and one set consonant to fill the gap and improve the flow. I have indicated the sounds by capitalising the letters in a word which contains the sound (different accents may pronounce the words differently, something to bear in mind). I have listed 23 sounds when only 22 are needed, which is because I had extra and eliminated some, but somehow I ended up with 23 sounds used between edges and corners.

I intend to try out the system for both edges and corners of 3x3x3, to find out how well it works. I hope to be able to do edges using audio loop for one 3x3x3 BLD, and use it for corners on bigger cubes.

Some examples to demonstrate:
OP: Oddish peaceful (Oddish lying back on a deckchair)
I: Ivysaur in a bath
flip edge containing C: Charmeleon standing on its head

slEd Mat caT pUt: sounds like M2
pUtt OUt: pUtt (Water) OUt

Hope some people find this stuff useful, or at least interesting. I'll update when I have managed to upgrade to 3 or 4 letters per image, which I hope to achieve soon. I'm tired as I write this, so there may be glaring omissions, mistakes, and typos, so feel free to point stuff out and ask for clarification.

Matt

 

[cmhardw]

Ok so this is over a year old, but I just saw this and it's very cool to watch! This is Simon Reinhard setting the current World Record of 21.90 seconds for memorizing a deck of cards. This is from June of 2010.

 

[DavidWoner]

Stackmat! I wonder what the record for memo+recall is?

 

[Mike Hughey]

A couple of thoughts that occurred to me while watching that:

1. Think of the adrenaline rush when you've finished memorizing, and are putting the other deck in order. We have no feeling like that in anything we do at cubing competitions! It was clear he was confident of his memory; he knew that he was going to get a world record if only he didn't mess up putting the cards in order. I would imagine if that were me, my heart would be racing like crazy the whole time I was sorting the cards!

2. I wonder what kinds of steps they take to prevent cheating. (Since we've had problems with cheating, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think they might have something similar.) Just ordinary decks of cards like that seem like they would be tempting to a magician somewhere...

 

[kinch2002]

A couple of thoughts that occurred to me while watching that:

1. Think of the adrenaline rush when you've finished memorizing, and are putting the other deck in order. We have no feeling like that in anything we do at cubing competitions! It was clear he was confident of his memory; he knew that he was going to get a world record if only he didn't mess up putting the cards in order. I would imagine if that were me, my heart would be racing like crazy the whole time I was sorting the cards!

2. I wonder what kinds of steps they take to prevent cheating. (Since we've had problems with cheating, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think they might have something similar.) Just ordinary decks of cards like that seem like they would be tempting to a magician somewhere...

I think if you get a fast memo in comp you can get that adrenaline rush - not to quite the same level as they do, but somewhere close.

I assume they can't bring their own cards, because that would make it way too easy to cheat.

 

[lucarubik]

I agree with kinch2002 at the first point. I got really impressed about the video!! do you know how did he do this? maybe audio loop or something like that?

 

[Escher]

I agree with kinch2002 at the first point. I got really impressed about the video!! do you know how did he do this? maybe audio loop or something like that?

Iirc from what I read a while ago, the fast people actually use image-based loci/roman rooms systems.

 

[Stefan]

I assume they can't bring their own cards, because that would make it way too easy to cheat.

I participated in the German Open last year and we all had our own cards. Cards differ in size, look and movement, so it's best to use the cards you're used to. Just like we use our own cubes.

How could you cheat?

 

[Mike Hughey]

I think if you get a fast memo in comp you can get that adrenaline rush - not to quite the same level as they do, but somewhere close.

It really seems to me like this is much different, though, because:
a. you know for certain that it will be a WR if you don't mess up; there's no question about it, since you know exactly what your time will be!
b. it lasts much longer - several minutes instead of about 15 seconds for 3x3x3 BLD.

I do know what you're talking about; my 1:04 at US Nationals was really fast and really secure for me - I thought I might be sub-1. (Which would probably be equivalent for me to someone like lucarubik getting WR.) But I was wrong - I didn't quite make sub-1. That wouldn't happen here - you know exactly what you're going to get.

As for how you could cheat, I haven't thought of something specific, but it certainly seems like a typical challenge that a card magician would love to try to work out. I can't help believing there's probably something they could come up with.

 

[kinch2002]

I participated in the German Open last year and we all had our own cards. Cards differ in size, look and movement, so it's best to use the cards you're used to. Just like we use our own cubes.

How could you cheat?

Ah ok. Thanks for the info. I was thinking that having marked decks might help, but now that I think about the process, that wouldn't work, except for looking at the card on top of the memo deck.