What EO does is reduce the cube to <RULDF2B2>, as you probably already know. The way you are gonna transform a good edge to a bad edge and vice versa is by breaking that, so commonly done with F, F', B, B'. Doing one of those will flip all the edges on that face, so we need to figure out a) how to identify the edges and b) how to solve them. Solving them is quite easy. If you have 4,8 or 12 egdes you put 4 on F or B (using nonF/B moves) then do one of those turns to flip 4. Repeat until you've done them all. If you have 2, 6 or 10 moves you need to get to a state where you have 4 or 8 (or 12, but don't do that) bad edges. To do this, if you have 2, put one of them on F or B then turn F or B. Now you've made 1 good and 3 bad, so that means you have 4 bad edges in total. For 6 bad edges, you can either do 4 and 2 or 3 then 4 (think about how 3 then 4 would work). For 10, you do 4 and 6.
To actually identify a bad edge, you can do it a few ways. The most intuitive way is to see if that edge can be solved with <RULDB2F2>, but that takes a lot of time. The way I'd recommend is this:
- Look at the U face.
- Check an edge: is it an E slice edge or a U/D edge?
- If it's a U/D edge, it is good if the U/D colour is facing you.
- If it's an E slice edge, it is good if the F/B colour is facing you.
- Repeat for F (only looking at the edges on the E slice), D and B (only looking at the edges that are on the E slice).
An easy shortcut is that if the L/R edge is facing you, it is bad.
Now do a lot of solves until this becomes automatic. I would recommend learning how to recognise a second axis asap (so normally people start with blue/green on F, then orange/red on F).
Some tricks to be more CN:
- a z roatation doesn't affect EO (z*<RULDF2B2> = <DRULF2B2> which is just the first set reordered) -> the axis only depends on your F/B colours.
- double rotations don't affect EO (as they preserve your F/B colours, just switching them around).
- Instead of inspecting all three EOs, choosing the best, then finding the best cross on that colour, just find a good looking cross then inspect the 2 EOs that apply to it.
Beyond this, just do a lot of solves and enjoy ZZ! It's a bit more inspection heavy than Roux and CFOP, but it's a really fun method imo and you'll have a great time using it. Also, use EOCross for TH.
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