# 5x5x5 Move Count



## Jason Baum (Jun 13, 2008)

I took averages for my 5x5x5 move count of centers and edges:

Centers: 69 (63) (78) 71 67 67 62 71 72 69 66 70 = *68.4*

Edges (using AVG): 120 107 119 118 (103) 113 123 126 119 (129) 115 119 = *117.9*

I was wondering how this compares to the top 5x5x5 solvers (except for Frank Morris because his move count is negative, of course). I could probably save more moves on my edges, but I'm curious as to how much.


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## Ron (Jun 13, 2008)

Hi Jason,

I use the triplet pairing system, although I only practice the 2+2 pairing system.
Here are my results of March 2007.

C1	C2	C3	C4	C6	CT	4E	8E	12	ET	33	Tot
14	16	14	09	13	*66* 28	21	31	*80* 53	*199*
12	17	12	12	11	*64* 33	21	28	*82* 53	*199*
10	15	11	16	16	*68* 28	24	29	*81* 60	*209*
10	22	13	15	17	*77* 29	16	35	*80* 50	*207*
12	11	12	14	14	*63* 24	27	24	*75* 42	*180*
11	16	11	09	11	*58* 36	16	26	*78* 54	*190*

Actually, Bernett, Frank and I compared our results back then.
I have their results, but I hope they will post them themselves.

Have fun,

Ron


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## AvGalen (Jun 13, 2008)

I am not a top solver, but because you asked how many moves you could save on edges I thought I would post my results. I only have time for 3 solves (normal solves, not optimised for fewest moves):

Centers = 10 + 14 + 15 + 15 + 14 = 68
Edges: 7 + 10 + 7 + 6 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 6 + 8 + 7 + 15 (parity) = 87

Centers = 9 + 15 + 10 + 11 + 16 = 61
Edges = 7 + 9 + 6 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 8 + 5 + 7 + 7 + 8 + 15 = 91 (parity again)

Centers = 11 + 13 + 9 + 14 + 8 = 55
Edges = 7 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 8 + 6 + 8 + 8 + 7 + 7 = 72

So I guess you could save about 35 moves on edges. Are you sure you are not using my beginners edge-method where you always setup to UB? I have some examples at http://www.speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=1447 and even with the beginners method I got 117 moves.


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## Jason Baum (Jun 13, 2008)

Wow, that's way fewer moves than I thought. Ron, I tried a few solves just now using the triplet pairing system and my move count was significantly lower, but I just can't spot the pieces fast enough. Plus I hardly know any cases for the final two edge pairs. But maybe it's something I should start practicing more. Arnaud, 72 moves seems crazy. I know I waste some moves because I prefer to do things like U' R U' R' instead of R U2 R', but there must be something seriously wrong with my AVG technique if I am wasting that many moves. I'll have to look at your guides more closely and spot what I'm doing wrong.


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## Erik (Jun 13, 2008)

So I tried 7 times:
Centres: 65, (73), 62, 69, 63, (54), 62 = 64.2
Edges: 96 (p), (78), (108), 83, 86, 97 (p), 90 = 90.4

On edges I 'waste' moves because I never do: DR2D' but mostly: R'DR'D' and rR' or rR and some setup moves I can do in 3 when I do them in like 5, which in reality doesn't lose much Time, but I better look at it xD
Trying an optimal solve with 6 at a time and good setup moves I got 77 easily, but of course this system lacks of lookahead


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## AvGalen (Jun 13, 2008)

As you can see, the 87 had 11 pairings, the 91 had 12 pairings and the 72 had only 10 pairings AND no parities which means that on that solve 21 out of 24 edges were bad which isn't even really lucky.

A normal pairing is A+B setup moves + 1 slice move + 3 replacement moves + 1 anti-slice move. In reality, A is mostly 2, B is mostly 0 so a normal pairing is mostly 7 moves. That doesn't mean those moves are always very fast (consider B2R2). I really hate the cases from DL, DB and LB because my left hand is obstructing the view.

50% of the time you don't have parity, so you will only have 11 cycles, so for those solves sub 80 moves is normal.
50% of the time you do have parity so you might get 11 normal cycles and the 12 move parity fix (+setups) for those solves 90 moves is normal.
Only in extremely rare cases (no semi-pairs at the beginning, lots of flipped edges, parity) would you need about 100 moves. But if there are a lot of semi-pairs already built (you can save them during the last centers) and you have easy setups and no parity I can see sub 65 happening.

Compared to the bigcube method (8 tredges without restoring centers then algs for the last4 tredges) I think AVG uses about 5 moves extra on average, but because of the better look ahead I consider it to be faster. (and you only need to know 1 of all those last-4-tredges-algs )


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## aznblur (Jun 13, 2008)

Centres - [60],[78], 65, 65, 71 = 67
Edges - [88(p)], 75, 85, 71, [62] = 77

I use 2469 or 369 centres depending on the situation and triplet pairing system. My last four edges are horrible.


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## AvGalen (Jun 13, 2008)

> Edges - [88(p)], 75, [85], 71, 62 = 69.3333


I guess you tried dropping highest and lowest, but made a mistake?
71+75+85 = 77 average


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## aznblur (Jun 13, 2008)

Haha, oops. 

Thanks for pointing that out.


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## Pedro (Jun 13, 2008)

did 5 solves:

(center 1, center 2, center 3, center 4, center 5+6 = total
edges total)

12 13 12 26 13 = 76
117

16 16 16 21 16 = 85
109

13 12 15 12 15 = 67
117

14 19 12 5 17 = 67
112 

11 18 12 22 15 = 78
110

conclusion: I suck 
no wonder why my reduction takes more than 2 minutes...


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## AvGalen (Jun 13, 2008)

> conclusion: I suck
> no wonder why my reduction takes more than 2 minutes...


That's true and false

It's true because reduction takes you more than 2 minutes... so you suck 
It's false because you confuse fewer moves with faster times. Doing 2 tps is doable on a 5x5x5 so even with 75+110 moves for reduction you could still do it in about 1:30. Look-ahead is much more important and it is the main reason why I am relatively fast on 5x5x5 eventhough I move very slowly.


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## Mike Hughey (Jun 13, 2008)

Jason Baum said:


> I took averages for my 5x5x5 move count of centers and edges:
> 
> Centers: 69 (63) (78) 71 67 67 62 71 72 69 66 70 = *68.4*
> 
> ...



I always wondered how it could be that you were beating me by only 6 or 7 seconds in competition, when you're so much faster than me. Now I see why. (My edges run less than 90 moves average, like Arnaud.) I hope you can figure out where you need to fix it - once you do, I'm sure you will be averaging sub-2:30 instantly, and probably be sub-2 pretty quickly if you work at it a little.

Look out, everyone - Jason is about to get good at big cubes!


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## masterofthebass (Jun 13, 2008)

Here are my 5 tries:

Centers:
67, 68, 70, 75, 70

Edges:
89 (like 4-5 edge flips=7 moves each), 81, 71, 67, 90 (5 edge flips in the last 4 centers.)

So, when I use a lot of edge flips, my move count shoots up, but like Erik said, they are really fast. Those extra moves are done in around a second, so they really skew results. The 3 good solves went pretty well, and I avoided parity on all solves.


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## AvGalen (Jun 13, 2008)

I agree that less moves doesn't equal better times when you can move the cube really fast like Erik, Dan (and Jason probably) can. But using almost 1/3 extra moves is just bad and should be easily fixed to get a better mixture between less moves, but still very fast turning.

I would like to know if Dan really found a way to avoid parity on 5x5x5, if he was just lucky, or if he fixed parity without realizing it.


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## masterofthebass (Jun 13, 2008)

I think I just got lucky  Also, since I always have to solve hte last 2 edges together, parity really doesn't affect move count. The parity alg for AvG is 12 moves, while the simplest non parity alg is 9 moves.


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## ExoCorsair (Jun 13, 2008)

I'll try this when I have time later today or next week...


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## Pedro (Jun 13, 2008)

AvGalen said:


> > conclusion: I suck
> > no wonder why my reduction takes more than 2 minutes...
> 
> 
> ...



yeah, my look ahead is pretty bad...sometimes I take out a matched group, replacing it with another...and find that if I put that one the other way, it would be ready to match ¬¬

I'll work at it...


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## ExoCorsair (Jun 13, 2008)

*C1* 10 09 11 08 07
*C2* 14 18 16 15 18
*C3* 13 09 09 11 10
*C4 *14 17 16 17 12
*CL* 15 12 10 22 11
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*CT 66 65 62 73 58*

*E01* 09 06 05 07 07
*E02* 09 08 11 07 10
*E03* 06 11 16 07 04
*E04* 04 07 10 07 04
*E05* 09 11 11 07 05
*E06* 06 10 05 04 05
*E07* 11 06 04 11 10
*E08* 04 05 06 05 06
---------
*EFi 58 64 68 55 51*
--------
*E09* 15 13 08 13 06
*E10* 08 11 08 11 11
*E11* 09 00 00 00 09
*ELa* 13 16 15 12 13
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*ET 103 104 99 91 86*

So the average reduction for me has a little more than 160 moves.
So apparently my TPS during reduction is only 2.


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## Mike Hughey (Jun 13, 2008)

I just tried it quick to see where I stand. These were done at speed, and I averaged 3:20 on the solves (but I was taking time to type in my counts as I went, so I'd like to think they were really sub-3:15). So they really were pretty typical speedsolves for me.

Centers: (63), 70, 66, 74, (78) = 70
Edges: (77), 84, (94p), 84, 87p = 85

Conclusion: My move counts are pretty competitive with the guys who are good at this. Obviously my problem is that I'm just slow.  Probably I just still need to get better with lookahead.


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## Hadley4000 (Jun 13, 2008)

Alright, time for the master. I'll only do 1.

Centers: 83
Edges: 154


How did I hit sub 4?


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## pjk (Jun 13, 2008)

Centers: 85 Edges: 112
Centers: 69 Edges: 100
Centers: 64 Edges: 102
Centers: 77 Edges: 114
Centers: 74 Edges: 107
------------------------
Avg: Centers: 73 Edges: 107

I need to work on it. Out of all of those, I think the one with the most moves would have been the fastest solve. I do F R' F' R a lot to insert an edge from the UF spot into the RF spot, which is quick, yet long.

I am curious about the move counts on the 4x4 now.... you guys should post your 4x4 move counts for centers and edges.


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## Mike Hughey (Jun 13, 2008)

4x4x4:
Centers: 28, 25, 33, (22), (35) = 28.7
Edges: 38, 47, (36), (50), 39 = 41.3

I have a feeling I'm significantly less efficient at 4x4x4, since I pretty much only do it for the weekly competitions.


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## Dene (Jun 13, 2008)

Hadley4000 said:


> Alright, time for the master. I'll only do 1.
> 
> Centers: 83
> Edges: 154
> ...



LMAO, funny one  .

I'll try this soon. I have a feeling my move counts will be similar to yours, Hadley >.< (I average sub3, btw).

EDIT:
Centers: 63
Edges: 82
Solve was 4:08.20 in the end.
I can't confirm those numbers, but I think that is around about what they were.
Better than I expected, although this is definitely not representative of my typical solve.

My centers were only a few seconds slower than in a normal solve, although I did to them quite well compared to what I normally do and there were quite easy cases throughout. Thus I would suggest my usual range for move count to be 55-80, with probably closer to 70 on average.

For edges they went quite well although nothing out of the ordinary for the first 8. The last 4 edges were very easy and I would say normally there are +20 moves on top of that. Also, I did 1 slice move that I only counted as 1 move.

Otherwise, I did better than expected. I must just be straight up slow.
Damn.


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## Lucas Garron (Jun 14, 2008)

Mike Hughey said:


> 4x4x4:
> Centers: 28, 25, 33, (22), (35) = 28.7
> Edges: 38, 47, (36), (50), 39 = 41.3



Somewhat FMC, but using exactly the same system I use for speed:

25, 24, 23, (21), (26) > 24
32, 34, 34, (35), (22) > 33.3


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## Lucas Garron (Jun 14, 2008)

First try on 5x5x5:

62 centers, 48.31
74 edges, 1:02.69
56 3x3x3 (bad end), 31.64

2469 centers, AvG edges.

The times are high because I'm counting moves, but that was a perfectly normal 5x5x5 solve.

EDIT:
2nd try:
59 centers, 38.94
82 edges (parity), 1:20.50
54 33x3, 32.07


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## jazzthief81 (Jun 14, 2008)

This is my result for 10 cubes using tredges, with the averages in between brackets:

Center 1: 13 14 16 11 9 12 10 14 15 19 (13.3)
Center 2: 17 14 20 19 16 18 12 14 21 18 (16.9)
Center 3: 15 11 12 10 12 10 13 14 13 16 (12.6)
Center 4: 15 14 18 17 16 10 14 11 15 16 (14.6)
Center 5+6: 11 9 15 11 16 12 11 11 14 13 (12.3)
*All Centers: 71 62 81 68 69 62 60 64 78 82 (69.7)* 
Tredges 1-4: 28 26 27 23 29 24 35 28 26 21 (26.7)
Tredges 5-8: 29 27 30 24 24 29 23 29 27 29 (27.1)
Tredges 9-12:24 22 18 21 30 21 32 32 32 25 (25.7)
*All tredges: 81 75 75 68 83 74 90 89 85 75 (79.5)*


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## rachmaninovian (Jun 14, 2008)

i remember doing move counts last time. mostly below 300, ranging from 270 to 310. direct solving isn't that consistent.


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## FrankMorris (Jun 15, 2008)

Here is the really old move count of mine that Ron was talking about. I have no clue where I am at now. Hope it helps. BTW, what did you mean by my move count being negative Jason?

Centers: 69, 72, 65, 74, 66=69.2
Edges: 91, 81, 79, 83, 79=82.6


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## UMichSpeedCubist (Jun 15, 2008)

I specialize in reducing turn-count for 5x5 (as opposed to reducing my times apparently) and did two attempts just now. I got parity on both, but since I can't do the alg slow enough to keep count I will list the result before executing parity, but setup for the parity alg.

I got 54/63 on my first one, and 60/65 on the second. But I was extra careful during edges.


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## Mike Hughey (Jun 15, 2008)

Kal El said:


> BTW, what did you mean by my move count being negative Jason?



Don't tell me you haven't seen this?
http://cube.garron.us/misc/frank_morris.htm

Obviously it's another fact that just belongs in there.


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## FrankMorris (Jun 15, 2008)

Wow, I had not seen that. I have been out of the loop lately. Perhaps I should pay better attention.

This came at a perfect time. I really need something to smile at in life. Thanks guys.


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## RobinBloehm (Jun 15, 2008)

What is your way to count your moves, do you count while solving or do you capture a video an count then?


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## unsolved (Mar 14, 2016)

Lucas Garron said:


> First try on 5x5x5:
> 
> 62 centers, 48.31
> 74 edges, 1:02.69
> ...



That is some impressive center move counts. My 5x5x5 program is experimenting with tredge-first (in an attempt to avoid parity at the end) vs. center-first in terms of which has the lower overall move count. So far, it seems centers-first wins, but in a few cases the tredge-first solutions have prevailed.

I also experimented with fixed-depth searches. Even by only looking ahead 7 moves on scrambles 60+ moves in length, the program can find a way to restore 30+ centers on the 5x5x5. As I gather more data, at some point, I'd like to have a friendly "humans vs. computer" for shortest center solves of some scrambles. Once I see what it is some of you do, I may be able to write some better code. Now, the program is just fast and dumb, with nothing to guide its center searches.


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## willtri4 (Mar 15, 2016)

whoa almost 8 year bump. That's gotta be a record, or close to it


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## unsolved (Apr 26, 2016)

willtri4 said:


> whoa almost 8 year bump. That's gotta be a record, or close to it



Well the forum rules clearly state to search for existing content before spawning new threads. I've been reprimanded more than once regarding "creating something new" when a pre-existing thread was available.

There are no other options: Either I must resurrect the dead or duplicate what already exists.

The important thing is, the new post has relevance, and it was not done just for the sake of keeping a closed topic open. Back in 2008, the technology did not exist to solve the 5x5x5 (using a program) in a reasonable amount of time. Today, there are two programs that I know of: Mine and the one in development by the forum member named *IAssemble*.

Here is a recent cage-solving method used by my program. Looks like 69 moves for centers, 88 for edges, 10 for corners, 167 total.

L' B' U L2 U F' U' F2 U' R2 // corners solved in 10
R F U' 2L D L' D' 2L' B F' L R' // 11 edges
L D' 2R2 D L' R D' 2R2 D R' // 15 edges
3R U' 3R' D 3F' D2 3F 3R U 3R' D // 19 edges
2U' B' D' 3R D2 3R' B 2U B' D' B // 23 edges
F' 2L' F R2 F2 R F 2L F' R' F2 R2 // 27 edges
2D2 2U' F' U' F 2D2 2U2 F' U F 2U' // 30 edges
2B U' 2B' F2 L' 2B L F2 U L' 2B' L // 33 edges
F R' F 2R2 F' R F 2R2 F2 // cage completed in 98 moves total
2R 2F' 2B' 2R' 3R' 2L' 2F2 2B 3R 2L 2F' 
L' 3U 2R 3U' L R 3F' 2R' 3F R' 
2R' F' 2B' 2R 2F' 2B2 2R' F 2B' 2R 2F
2U2 2R D' 2R' 2U2 2D' 2R D 2R' 2D 
2R2 3F' L' 3U2 2B' 3U2 2B L 3F 2R2 
R 2U' R 3U R' 2U R 3U' R2
2L2 U' 2R2 U 2L2 U' 2R2 U // 167 moves total, so centers required 69 moves


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