5-style
What is 5-style?
The idea of introducing 5-style is to have a better understanding of how advanced BLD algsets will look like. The problem with BLD events is that once a person starts out with the beginner's blindfold method, there is a lot of excitement, and lots of things to improve on, then there is the awe of the 3-style method, and the execution speeds that can be achieved using it. In a few years after starting out with blindsolving, and optimizing oneself in every way possible in memorization, and speed optimal execution, floating algs and parity subsets, there is a big case of loss of motivation. Many BLDers have quit cubing after they try out 3-style for a few years. Ishaan, Marcell, Max and many more cubers do not see the next big step, and 3-style just feels like a big plateau. Also no one likes to improve in the most snail’s pace way, by shaving off milliseconds by improving turn speed, or waiting for the cube gods to give us a lucky scramble. It is best if there exists one method that people can look upto after they try out and optimize with 3-style. 5-style is just a standalone method, most probably even after learning a big subset of 5-style edges, chances are that you need a 3-style alg to finish off the last 2 edge targets, so 5-style is an addition to 3-style to make solves more harmonious. It is one of the biggest algset that exists and even overshadows 1LLL (1 Look Last Layer in CFOP method). The main aim with trying out such a big algset is to understand cubing as a long term project and try to get more involved and efficient algsets in order to improve blindsolving. The ultimate aim is to improve a person's transfer learning capabilities by training in a rigorous method like 5style. By transfer learning I mean, getting useful mental improvements out of cubing. For example one byproduct of learning 5-style and letter quads might help improve linguistics and memory.
The contribution that I am making in this document is introducing 3 new concepts. The concept of letter quads for memorising cube targets thus reducing the information to be memorised, the concept of Yo notation to memorising 3-gen or 4-gen algs easily and of course the concept of 5-style edges and some useful stats and analysis about them.
Disclaimer: Please delve into this method only if you love speedcubing, and only if 3BLD/MBLD is your main event, otherwise this is not worth investing your time into.
Background about blindsolving
5-Style is a method that tries to solve a 3x3 cube in around 50-70 moves which is almost the CFOP solutions that are not super advanced. Commutators are the go-to way of doing a 3x3 blindfolded. Not all 5-cycles can be described as a trivial commutator though, that's why I have the Yo notation to make alg memorisation easier. I will be describing details of Yo notation that are useful later in this document. This method is to be used in 3BLD to reduce the time of execution which stands at ~11 seconds now using the 3-style method with fancy parity and floating algs subsets. The main applicability of this method is for the MBLD since there is no restriction on the upper limit on the number of cubes as newer methods continue building complexity to improve the MBLD score. I am not sure if it will give a major boost to the 3BLD event, as exec is a lot TPS dependent and on muscle memory. But yes, letter quads, a side product of 5-style will be definitely useful to improve 3BLD memo and shave off more milliseconds than what noddon and throwing the cube cover does.
Origin of the word style is kinda not clear, but after the BH algs were developed a decade ago, they were slowly worked upon and made into a better algset called 3-style. Noah Arthurs in his tutorials introduced the word style to mean that the specific algset has more fingertrickable algs, and are more focussed on 3gen and regripless execution.
Unblackboxing this method to make it easily understandable is one crucial thing that this mega-manual tries to address. Has this idea been previously thought of? Most probably not. Cubing is quite new and there are still a lot of ideas that have not been tested out. Only time will tell which ideas are worth the effort and to be brought into the mainstream. Before we dive into the sea of letter quads, Yo notation and UF5 theory, let me give a backstory on how I have chosen this path of complexity.
