Sunday, August 13, 2017

Popular BLD vs My BLD

Last night one thing led to another as they often do when researching online and I decided to really see how other people solve the cube without looking. NoahCubes on the Cubing World channel has a 5 video series on the subject. I'm on video 3. He is showing the Old Pochmann method. My method is based on the basic idea Pochmann used, at least partly, so the basic method is the same, but the implementation is way different. When I got started I knew only one algorithm that swaps a pair of corners and a pair of edges. So that is the algorithm I went with. I found a way to make it work for both corners and edges. Today I looked it up to see if my swapping algorithm has one of those Perm names. Yep. It is an F Perm algorithm. www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/PLL#F_Permutation is the page I found it on.

Too bad I didn't learn more of those PLL algorithms. The one NoahCubes shows has a definite advantage over mine. Setup moves for corners take either 1 or 2 moves. That is because the target is isolated from the other 3 pieces in the double swap. R, F, and D can all be used freely without disturbing the 3. My F Perm swapper is no longer than the algorithm he uses, but he has the advantage in setup move count. On the other hand I'm not so comfortable using D and I don't have to use it at all in my setups. And three series of moves that drive my setup move count up are R U Ri, R Ui Ri, and R U2 Ri. Those are pretty quick and easy to do. I also use L in my setup moves sometimes. Counting each of the above 3 sequences as 1 move instead of 3 moves here's how my setup moves break down: 3 take only 1 move; 10 take only 2 moves; 5 take 3 moves; 2 take 4 moves. I guess it isn't as bad as I thought.

I just finished video 3 of 5 in the series. He told about M2 for solving the edges. At first it seemed so simple and quick. Wow! But then it got crazy requiring some complicated thinking and knowledge of Y Perm or something like that. He has talked a lot about T Perm and Y Perm and J Perm. What are those? J Perm. To swap A and D corners and A and D edges use a J Perm algo. But in BLD you modify it slightly so you are swapping corners A and S. T Perm swaps corners A and D, and edges B and D. See the T? Y Perm swaps A and C corners, and A and D edges. There you have it. I do not plan to ever learn any of these algorithms.

He also used the nasty P word—parity. My method may not be as fast for speed solvers, but it is way more simple and straightforward. You pretty much just plug along using the same one algorithm for both corners and edges. The only thing is if you do an odd number of swaps in the first part you have to start with the front piece instead of the back piece when planning out the solve because it will be in the back when you get to that point in the solve.

I wonder though if I could use a combination of M2 and my method? Use M2 until it gets crazy then jump to my method. Is that possible? Rather than try it out immediately I went on to video 4, in which Noah talks about his memorization system. He uses letter pairs. Visual letter pairs and audio letter pairs. He goes into great detail. I might try to incorporate some of this. I think the visual images could be confusing to me because how do I know the order? So I might use audio for the whole solve instead of one for corners and the other for edges. He does not make sentences like I have been doing. I have already started using letter pairs and even 3 letters to form a single word, even before watching his video. With mine I have made things up on the fly though. He has a consistent set of words for each letter pair. In video 5 he gives tips on how to get sub 2. It builds on already being comfortable with the technique he taught in the previous videos. I don't plan to use it, so I will not be watching 5 at this time. I would like to see what others have to say about BLD though. I watched a couple other guys. Evidently there are a lot of memorization techniques. Mine works for me. I've been gravitating toward joining letters into a single word anyway.

Now I guess the only thing is to see if I could incorporate M2 at all.