Starting BLD solving

[choipster]

Hey, thanks for the help. going back through Macky's guide a couple times, I feel like i have a pretty good understanding of it.

i got a few questions though:

1) are there any restrictions regarding set up moves for orientation of corners and edges?
2) does it matter whether you do corner orientation or edge orientation first? i only ask because edge orientation is addressed first in his guide but is solved second in his example solves.
3) even though its a lot less algos than i expected, it still seems to be a few more than the 4 you mentioned. corner permutation for cycles of length 2 seems to involve 3 different algs by itself, and the notation there kinda throws me.
4) I dont fully understand parity. in the permutation parity section, two examples of parities are shown. how are you supposed to know which case you have? Also, the second example shown is solved through an H Perm, but the H Perm is also shown as a solution to a permutation cycle of length 2. why then is it considered a parity at all? shouldn't it just be a permutation cycle of length 2?

thanks for any help you can offer.

also, i checked out pjk's guide and found it pretty easy to understand. it seems the same method as the other site i checked out and the youtube video. i think i'll stick with the 3-cycle though cause it seems faster and i've spent the past couple days looking at it. thanks for the rec though. i'll be sure to check it out if 3-cycle proves too difficult.

 

[hait2]

Hey, thanks for the help. going back through Macky's guide a couple times, I feel like i have a pretty good understanding of it.

i got a few questions though:

1) are there any restrictions regarding set up moves for orientation of corners and edges?

no, there are no restrictions for orientation.

try to figure out why this is if you like, it's fairly simple (take a case where orientation isn't changed with setup moves, see what happens. then take a case where the setup moves DO change orientation, and see what happens)

2) does it matter whether you do corner orientation or edge orientation first? i only ask because edge orientation is addressed first in his guide but is solved second in his example solves.

doesn't matter. solving orientation doesn't affect any pieces at all except the ones you're solving. you could even do them both at once, although that's more trouble than it's worth.

3) even though its a lot less algos than i expected, it still seems to be a few more than the 4 you mentioned. corner permutation for cycles of length 2 seems to involve 3 different algs by itself, and the notation there kinda throws me.

well, i mean to be efficient sure, more is nice. but to solve cycles of length 2, you can do just fine with an Aperm. Say you have a corner cycle (12)(34). I mean you could apply (123). What do you have now? (143) (try to figure out why this is. do an Eperm on a cube, then apply an Aperm & see what happens) which you can solve by doing 3cycle again

which part of notation confuses you?

4) I dont fully understand parity. in the permutation parity section, two examples of parities are shown. how are you supposed to know which case you have? Also, the second example shown is solved through an H Perm, but the H Perm is also shown as a solution to a permutation cycle of length 2. why then is it considered a parity at all? shouldn't it just be a permutation cycle of length 2?

thanks for any help you can offer.

there's basically 3 types of parity. corner parity, edge parity, and corner-edge parity. All a parity means is a 2cycle. If you have a 2cycle, you have a parity.

So, if you have two 2cycles of corners, that's a corner parity. Two 2cycles of edges is an edge parity. A corner 2cycle and an edge 2cycle is a corner-edge (go figure) parity.

You know you have one because as you reduce down your cycles via solving, you end up with a 2cycle. If you solve all edges and wound up with a 2cycle, you're going to have a 2cycle of corners which you will solve later.

And yes, I admit I forgot about this. Add a 5th alg for parity solving. Something like Tperm (cycles edges and corners at once) would do.

Hopefully my answers didn't confuse you ^-^

 

[choipster]

thanks a lot for the help man. i really appreciate it. and your answers were great, didnt confuse me at all.

for the notation, im not sure what the x and w mean. but its ok because i realized i know how to do that alg already, just didnt notice it before.
also, i just plain didnt understand what i was seeing. i later realized that cp = corner permutation and ep= edge permutation, so just bonehead stuff on my part.

 

[badmephisto]

i tried getting into the M2R2 method for past two days, but i find it to be quite complicated - i understood Stefan's first method without any problems, and I thought it was very well explained, but I can't seem to get grasp on the M2R2 method...
It's not exactly clear what we can or can't change in the setup moves...
also, sometimes it seems like you are intentionally shooting an edge to its location but flipped? or shooting a corner to a wrong location on purpose, just to fix it all up at the very end with an algorithm. Is that even right? I'm not even sure... I don't think that some parts are very well explained, but the method itself is very good looking and it obviously really powerful... i just wish there was a little more

 

[masterofthebass]

There are some other threads on M2, but here it goes again. If you're moving from Pochmann's old method, then M2 is relatively easy to understand. Instead of doing you're T-perm to switch UL-UR you use M2 so switch FD-BU. Instead of switching corners back and forth, you're switching the centers and other M slice edges. There isn't really any freedom in the set-up moves, which is why Stefan wrote down every set-up. Stefan's idea for the middle edges is that you put the edge in it's correct position with an easy algorithm and then flip it later, versus using a long algorithm to put it in it's correct orientation. I haven't really delved into R2 much, but it's the same idea. If you don't use R2, and stick with old Pochmann's corner method, then for parity use U' F2 U M2 U' F2 U. It fixes the centers and switches UB-UL, like the Y-perm.

 

[Joël]

Hi,

I also have a BLD tutorial over here:

http://www.solvethecube.110mb.com/?location=blindfold

Quite a bit of reading, but it describes different kinds of methods and describes how to do orientation & permutation in one go (if this *sounds* hard don't be discouraged, it's not harder than other bld methods) in detail. Even even when you are not interested in learing the same method, I think it could be interesting for you.

- Joël.

 

[hait2]

thanks a lot for the help man. i really appreciate it. and your answers were great, didnt confuse me at all.

for the notation, im not sure what the x and w mean. but its ok because i realized i know how to do that alg already, just didnt notice it before.
also, i just plain didnt understand what i was seeing. i later realized that cp = corner permutation and ep= edge permutation, so just bonehead stuff on my part.

well, for future anyway, the xyz are cube rotations. usually you have x following R face, y following U face and z following F face (so like x' would be rotating in the same direction as R')

the w is for a double layer turn. another notation people use for it is a lowercase letter (like, Dw and d are the same)

 

[choipster]

oh, ok. thanks hait2.