# Corners first or edges first?



## Daniel Lin (May 16, 2016)

So I heard Noah say that solving edges first(and memoing them last) is better because there are more edges that you can cram into your short term memory than corners. 
But a lot of insanely fast people (Maskow, Gianfranco, Ollie) do corners first. Which is better?
I personally solve edges first


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## bobthegiraffemonkey (May 16, 2016)

I memo edges last and solve them first, but since I'm not great at audio I tend to do at least two pairs visually as well. I find visual memo is good, but only for very small amounts of information.


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## CyanSandwich (May 16, 2016)

Gianfranco is actually corners-first/edges-first neutral. Check it out.

I've recently switched to edges first (not for mbld), because more short term memo. I definitely still find it hard to do
12+ letters with audio.

Parity also seems better.


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## Daniel Lin (May 16, 2016)

CyanSandwich said:


> Gianfranco is actually corners-first/edges-first neutral. Check it out.


wow that is really cool


CyanSandwich said:


> Parity also seems better.


How? I don't think its any different.


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## ottozing (May 16, 2016)

There's also Kaijun who I think does corners first. My best guess is that at a high level, 3BLD memo is so short term that which part of the solve you use audio for doesn't really matter since you're going to be memoing both parts of the solve around the same speed. 

For Maskow's case, since he uses math symbols for his letter scheme, maybe using edges short(er) term wouldn't really work?


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## CyanSandwich (May 16, 2016)

Daniel Lin said:


> wow that is really cool
> 
> How? I don't think its any different.


Personally, I use UF and UBL buffers. Most of my parity cases with edges last involve a slice move setup to an R-perm.
Corners last is a setup to a Y-perm. That's just faster for me.

For M2 edges last, M2 y L2 (T-perm) L2 also seems worse than a Y perm. But I just got that off Zane's video.


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## porkynator (May 16, 2016)

Edges, corners, corners, edges.
I memo everything audio.


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## TheCoolMinxer (May 16, 2016)

Since I learned from Noah, I memo corners then edges, solve edges then solve corners. Works quite well for me because if I would execute corners first, I would definetely mess up my edges audio string lol


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## Chunjie Shan (Aug 3, 2016)

I had tried "memo corners memo edges solve corners solve edges", but it's easy to cause DNFs…I think "memo corners memo edges solve corners solve edges" is a suitable method, and I can memo a cube in 8 seconds with this method.


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## Daniel Lin (Aug 3, 2016)

Chunjie Shan said:


> I had tried "memo corners memo edges solve corners solve edges", but it's easy to cause DNFs…I think "memo corners memo edges solve corners solve edges" is a suitable method, and I can memo a cube in 8 seconds with this method.


Oh that's cool. I don't think many people do it this way though. Most people prefer to solve what they memo last first.


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## Chunjie Shan (Aug 4, 2016)

Daniel Lin said:


> Oh that's cool. I don't think many people do it this way though. Most people prefer to solve what they memo last first.


Yeah,I agree with you.


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## Ollie (Aug 4, 2016)

For the record, I am not insanely fast at 3BLD 

I have always struggled to do edges first and I have tried to switch on numerous occasions. I always fall down when there are complicated cycle breaks and/or lots of flipped edges. I don't think it makes a huge difference where you start to be honest, but I could be wrong. I'm getting too old for this sh*&.


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## mark49152 (Aug 4, 2016)

Ollie said:


> I always fall down when there are complicated cycle breaks and/or lots of flipped edges.


Why is that worse when you do edges first?


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## Ollie (Aug 4, 2016)

mark49152 said:


> Why is that worse when you do edges first?



More pieces usually means more cycle breaks are possible, and (for me) working out cycle breaks takes a bit longer and makes me lose my flow. At least with corners, I know that the maximum is 10 targets in the worst possible case for cycle breaks, which is still only 5 letter pairs.

tl;dr - more potential to go wrong with flipped edges, cycle breaks and parity when doing edges quickly with audio at the end. of your memo.


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## JanW (Aug 4, 2016)

Slightly related question - does anyone flip flipped edges before solving the rest of them?

If I forget to execute something, it's usually a flipped edge. I've considered doing those first, immediately after putting on the blindfold. A single flipped edge can be flipped together with the buffer piece, so this would require one more look to check where the buffer piece is located.


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## Chunjie Shan (Aug 4, 2016)

Ollie said:


> For the record, I am not insanely fast at 3BLD
> 
> I have always struggled to do edges first and I have tried to switch on numerous occasions. I always fall down when there are complicated cycle breaks and/or lots of flipped edges. I don't think it makes a huge difference where you start to be honest, but I could be wrong. I'm getting too old for this sh*&.


Hi, OF～. I'm a big fan. I think if you choose memo edges first,you may have to make story and so on. I had tried to memo corners with stories and read edges , and solve corners solve edges… It's very strange and it's easy to DNFs…


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## mark49152 (Aug 4, 2016)

Ollie said:


> More pieces usually means more cycle breaks are possible, and (for me) working out cycle breaks takes a bit longer and makes me lose my flow. At least with corners, I know that the maximum is 10 targets in the worst possible case for cycle breaks, which is still only 5 letter pairs.


Well yes, to be honest once I hit the second cycle break during edges I know it's unlikely to be a good solve anyway. Flipped edges and twisted corners are where I make most of my mistakes and I tend to screw up edges more as there are more positions to get mixed up. If I executed edges second I suspect I'd make more such mistakes, but I haven't tried it. Any tips for remembering flips and twists would be awesome.


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## Daniel Lin (Aug 4, 2016)

JanW said:


> Slightly related question - does anyone flip flipped edges before solving the rest of them?


I always flip as many edges as I can at the very beginning of execution. Like if two or four edges are flipped I just use an alg right after I finish memoing

If there are three flipped edges I just flip two of them at the beginning and flip the third one with the buffer after I solve all the edges


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## mark49152 (Aug 4, 2016)

@Daniel Lin , I like that idea, thanks. If the buffer piece is in a convenient place I might also flip 1 or 3 edges first.


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## Daniel Lin (Aug 4, 2016)

mark49152 said:


> If the buffer piece is in a convenient place I might also flip 1 or 3 edges first.


that won't work because you have to do your cycles before flipping the buffer
say your cycle is DF-LF-DR-FU-LB and FR is flipped, you must flip FR at the end (unless you can flip it with other edges outside the buffer). If you do it before the cycles, LF and the buffer will be flipped at the end


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## mark49152 (Aug 5, 2016)

Daniel Lin said:


> that won't work because you have to do your cycles before flipping the buffer
> say your cycle is DF-LF-DR-FU-LB and FR is flipped, you must flip FR at the end (unless you can flip it with other edges outside the buffer). If you do it before the cycles, LF and the buffer will be flipped at the end


No I meant the buffer piece, not the piece in the buffer position. I just used it in a few solves and it works fine. For example, my buffer is DF, and I just had a scramble with UR flipped. The buffer piece (belongs in DF when solved) was in UL. So I did a simple flip on UL/UR at the start of the solve.

I think I saw Jay do this in one of his solves recently, where he flipped all four edges on the R face at the start of the solve. Three were flipped in place, one was the buffer piece.


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## Daniel Lin (Aug 5, 2016)

mark49152 said:


> No I meant the buffer piece, not the piece in the buffer position. I just used it in a few solves and it works fine. For example, my buffer is DF, and I just had a scramble with UR flipped. The buffer piece (belongs in DF when solved) was in UL. So I did a simple flip on UL/UR at the start of the solve.
> 
> I think I saw Jay do this in one of his solves recently, where he flipped all four edges on the R face at the start of the solve. Three were flipped in place, one was the buffer piece.


oh yeah I see what you mean. I'm going to try to do that in my solves now.


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## JanW (Aug 5, 2016)

mark49152 said:


> No I meant the buffer piece, not the piece in the buffer position. I just used it in a few solves and it works fine. For example, my buffer is DF, and I just had a scramble with UR flipped. The buffer piece (belongs in DF when solved) was in UL. So I did a simple flip on UL/UR at the start of the solve.


Yeah, this is what I meant when I said flip with buffer piece. 

Have to be careful in solves with parity, depending on how you handle parity. With UF as buffer, I swap UF and UR if I have parity. I do it by treating UR edge (green/yellow) as my buffer during memo and buffer piece (red/yellow) as UR edge. So basically solve the red/yellow edge correctly oriented into UR slot immediately when it comes up and start new cycle at green/yellow edge. So the edge that needs flipping is not my actual buffer piece, but the UR edge, which acts as buffer in parity solves. Of course, this is the edge I always flip if there's an odd amount of flipped edges in a parity solve.


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## mark49152 (Aug 5, 2016)

@JanW, I don't have the same issue because as an M2/OP solver my buffer piece is DF and I swap UB/UL on parity. I do sometimes screw up when having to flip those pieces that are displaced before or after the parity fix, like UL, UB, DB, UF. Seems another good reason to flip them first if feasible.


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## Jacck (Aug 5, 2016)

Another concept (but only for slowcubing) to avoid solving flipped-innerslice-edges with M2:
If there is another just-flipped-edge, just solve this e.g. as UL LU and the piece in the buffer will be flipped (sorry, I think I really have to learn this few algs now , but it could be useful for a flipped target-edge, so you have only the M2 to do ).

And for memo and exe: in multiblind it is surely better to do memo and exe in the same order.


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## mark49152 (Aug 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> And for memo and exe: in multiblind it is surely better to do memo and exe in the same order.


Yeah I think for MBLD the same problem of messing up visual memo/recall of flips and twists doesn't exist because it becomes necessary to encode and memo those things with the rest, typically as images. For regular 3BLD that's probably too slow (but not as slow as spending 10 seconds figuring out what you're going to do ).


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## fp4316 (Aug 11, 2016)

Gianfranco told me at high levels it doesn't matter since if you're fast enough you are only limited by cube reading. Plus he will change the way he memorizes depending on a few factors.


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## lucarubik (Apr 7, 2017)

did not expect to be in the least popular choice, why do you guys do it that way (exec first what you memo last)? just so you can solve the parity in an easier way


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## Hazel (Apr 7, 2017)

I use visual for edges and audio for corners, so I find that I can't keep the corners memorized for as long (why I solve corners first). In fact, I attempted a 3BLD solve yesterday and I remember my edge visuals perfectly but I have no clue what the corner audio was.


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## lucarubik (Apr 7, 2017)

the way i see it is you are investing more time to make letter pairs just couse you cant hold 10 loops unless you are 200 iq, but you are investing more time to do so, or else you would be using letter pairs for the whole cube, so im asuming people who swap their order memo loops last and solve them first? pretty much your reason but no visual shenanigans


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## newtonbase (Apr 7, 2017)

@lucarubik I memo corners with a strong visual memo then edges with a quick audio memo. The audio memo has to be solved first as it is very short term.


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## abunickabhi (Jul 29, 2018)

I have tried both ways , and it doesn't make a difference , although , you are more driven when you do corner memo first , but thats get compensated by the forgetting percentage in CEEC as compared to ECCE.
At the end of the day , ECCE is very solid , and I DNF very less with it , as the flow is just right enough , but more like in CEEC , or very less as in a OP solve.


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