ECE method

ECE, Briggs-Adam method Information about the method Proposer(s): Crafto22, Joseph Briggs (Shadowslice e) Proposed: 2015 Alt Names: SSC (Shadowslice Snow Columns) Variants: Original variant, L6E variant, Broken variant, Permute-last variant, EZD variant, NoEO variant No. Steps: 4 major though lots of flexibility. Depends on variant No. Algs: around 50 depending on variant, 10 min. Avg Moves: ~40-50 depending on variant STM Purpose(s): Speedsolving, FMC

Method Overview

This method has been independently proposed by at least 3 people though it was perhaps developed most by Shadowslice e and crafto22. It is one of the most move efficient methods that has been developed; potentially on par with Heise, Human Thistlethwaite Algorithm and ZB depending on the variant. Also similar to Heise, it is quite intuitive and has a low algorithm count though in terms of procedure it is more similar to HTA or PCMS.

Basic Method

1. Solve 3/4 of the the E-slice, usually leaving the FR slot.
2. Orient the corners.
   1. Orient three corners on the D-face
   2. Orient the remaining corners by either using SLS (Shadowslice Last Slot), creating a pseudopair and doing Winter Variation or inserting the pseudopair and doing OCLL
3. Permute the corners
   1. Corners to layers
   2. Permute the corners (perhaps using Squre-1 algorithms)
4. LEE (Last eight edges)
   1. Orient the edges
   2. Solve the RD and LD edges
   3. LSE (Last Six Edges)
      1. Solve the UR and UL edges
      2. M-perms

Pros

• Low movecount
• Ergonomic- mostly {R,U,D,M}
• Low algorithm count compared to more popular speedsolving methods

Cons

• Can be difficult to transition from other popular methods as it does not directly solve many pieces until the final few steps.
• Pseudopairs can be difficult to get used to.
• Lookahead can be made difficult due to the lack of direct solving

Variants

There are quite a few variants to ABC, mostly to do with differences in the solving of the LEE

• EZD
  • For LEE, the edges are separated before being permuted with a set of algorithms.
  • This is the variant used by crafto22 to obtain his sub-13 averages.
• Broken
  • Similar to the Belt method, the F2L is solved after step 2 using {R2,L2,M2,U,D}
  • PLL
• Permute last
  • This is even more similar to the Belt method where edges are separated then PLL is applied to both sides.

See Also

• Original ECE method proposal and Variations