Update

It has been quite a while. I finally got my first BLD solve, and it has really made my day. Actually, nothing else has been happening, as school is taking up too much time. All I can hope to do is keep myself sub-20 till I get more time (college, anyone?). Speaking of college, it's that time of year. I already sent off my app to University of Chicago (don't expect to be accepted) and am planning on applying to Swarthmore College, as well. I'm so stressed out about that stuff right now it is downright ridiculous.

But my BLD skills have gotten much better. My first success had no parity and 3 solved edges in place. The second one had about 6 cycles and parity and some nasty flipped corners. My memorization is based on a number-letter system, with the format [piece position][orientation]. So a corner could have position 6 (DRB) and orientation of either O (orientated, or U/D, color in buffer position), D (depth, or F/B color), or S (side, or R/L color). Edges can be O or U (unoriented). What I've found most surprising is that once I can trace the pieces with my number-letter pairs, I don't have to remember them for the solve - I just know what piece is where. It's quite extraordinary.

Update and Early BLD Attempts

Not a big update here. I've been working away with ZBLL and constitution team (which eats up 10-12 hours of my week). More importantly for me, however, is that I've been working with blindfolded solves. I thought I could share a few thoughts on that while it's fresh in my mind.

I use the Old Pochmann method: placing one piece at a time from a buffer position using "pair swap" PLLs (PLLs that swap 2 edges and 2 corners each). Basically, this entails learning 6 algorithms to shoot the buffer piece to its appropriate slot (I might decide to do a video on this). This is not that hard, and there are plenty of good YouTube videos on it, though, again, I still might make on.

There are 6 algs to know:

T permutation

Ja permutation (swap blocks to the left (1), to the back (2), and to the right (3))

Jb permutation

Y permutation

Ra permutation (corner swap to the right)

My memorization time is down to about 10 minutes on a good attempt and at about 6 if I write down piece positions. The problem is, I always remember the last few corners wrong. So how do I memorize? Every edge has a number of 1 to 12 in this order: UF, UR, UB, UL, DF, DR, DB, DL, FR, FL, BR, BL (notice though that you will never send to position 2- it's the buffer). I then mark whether the edge is oriented or not, marked with an 'o' or 'u', respectively. Basically, an edge is oriented if it can be set up with the group (basically, it isn't out of your way to solve it with a T perm). Then I get a string of number-letter pairs. So one edge sequence might be: 12u 9u 4o 10u 11u 8u 5u 7o 6u 3o 6u. This edge sequence is bad for memo for 2 reasons: (1) there is an odd number of edges to place so there will be parity and (2) the two 6 spot edge placements means I broke into a cycle. blah...

I memorize the corners in much the same was: counterclockwise around the top starting with UFR and the same around the bottom starting with DFR, numbered from 1 to 8 (so 3 never gets used). I use the letter 'h' to stand for a top/bottom sticker on the top of the buffer piece. 's' stands for a side-colored sticker (in my case that is always red/orange) and 'd' stands for the front/back-colored sticker (blue/green for me). So a corner position might be: 8s 1d 2d 4h 6d 5h 4d 7h 7s. Again, an odd number of corners to be moved means parity, and the appearance of more than 1 4 and 7 indicates that cycles have been broken.

My solution to the above cube configuration? It's complicated.

d L' [T] L d2 L' [T] L d [T] d' L [T] L' d2 L [T] L' d' D M' [J(b)] M D' M' [J(b)] M' [J(b)] M2 D' M' [J(b)] M D [J(a)1] D' M' [J(b)] M D [R(a)] F [J(a)3] F' R [J(a)2] R2 [Y] R [J(a)3] R' [J(a)2] R' [J(a)2] R2 F R [J(a)2] R' F' D2 R2 [J(a)2] R2 D R' [J(a)2] R D

Update

I finally have time to update. School has taken its toll and I am relegated to 2 hours of homework on a good night. I can't wait for baseball season...

On the plus side, I have been slacking enough to learn all of the H and U orientations of ZBLL. It feels good, I must say, though U needs a ton of work. I'm estimating that I'll be at version 10 by the time I've finished learning ZBLL. Grr...

My times haven't dropped too much but I have been practicing OH and BLD quite a bit. I'm even getting successful BLD solves!!! It just takes me an hour. As memorization time goes down (I have ideas here) I'm sure I'll improve. I'll share some thoughts on BLD some other time, but I do have comments about algorithms (well, just Y actually).

I'm in Pain

Basic reason why I can't post anything reasonable: school and no more wisdom teeth. Make sure they give you some Vicodin or something because I am in serious pain right now.

Color Scheme Research

I'm starting to play around with opponent colors for a color scheme. Using a white type FI. So far it's worked out well, as I'm only 5 seconds behind my regular scheme average.

Update

It's been quite a while but not much has happened. My times have gotten slightly better but I haven't had time for a full average. I am continuing to update my ZBLL document and will soon finish re-doing the H sets. I realized that I have forgotten roughly 1/3 of my OLLs, so I have to relearn those. I recently got some pretty nice FMC solves (26, 27, and 23) that were ruined by having to undo premoves (28, 33, and 28 in the end).

The admissions lady a Grinnell asked if I could post a video of me solving. Apparently they like stuff like that.

Update

Not much happened this week. I'm preparing for a road trip to the midwest and haven't had that much time to cube. Like many weeks I had enough time to do the weekly competition on the speedsolving.com forums. I set a pb in the fewest moves challenge this week with a 28 move solve. It was the first time I got a chance to use premoves and boy did it pay off. I'm getting pretty good at this FMC thing and am really enjoying it.

I had my first sub-2 minute solve on the 4x4x4 yesterday, right after I had a dream about going sub-2 (in my dream it was 1:43.xx, in real life it was 1:57.xx). My PyraMinx solving has gotten more consistent, as well. I'm using a Fridrich-style method that gets me times around 17 second pretty consistently. I put some serious work into revamping my H sets in my ZBLL document. Some of those algs were...bad, to say the least, and I finally got around to fixing them. Now I have to relearn them all, though. Grrr...