# HOW to blindfolded SQ1



## dlzcy (Jan 6, 2008)

I realy want to kown ,HOW to blindfolded SQ1


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## joey (Jan 6, 2008)

You have to work it out yourself, there are no current guides available. To my knowledge only three people have done it. Lucas Garron, Stefan Pochmann and Matyas Kuti.


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## Lucas Garron (Jan 6, 2008)

Try speed BLD on 3xx3 first. That will help with getting to cube. Then learn some 2-cycles and 3-cycles for permutation. 2-cycles leave no parity and are easier to setup, but take longer.

P.S. Don't ask me where to find algs.


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## Derrick Eide17 (Jan 6, 2008)

hey lucas.................. where can you find algs?


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## dlzcy (Jan 8, 2008)

THX verymuch ,I will try


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## deadalnix (Jan 8, 2008)

Yes tell us a little more about algs !


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## magicsquares (Jan 9, 2008)

I guess they make up their own algs or use commutators or something like that.


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 9, 2008)

There are just a ton of algorithms for the square-1 on Jaap's puzzle page:

http://www.geocities.com/jaapsch/puzzles/square1.htm

I can't imagine you'd really need much more than the algorithms on this page. (In fact, I'm sure you only need a small subset of them.) It's just a matter of working out how to use them.

To me, the biggest challenge here is figuring out how to get the puzzle cubic and remembering where every piece is when you get there. After that, it would seem like it should be fairly straightforward to come up with a method to solve it BLD. Lucas's comment seems to imply he does it by applying speed BLD techniques - seeing how to get it cubic in his head, and then following each piece through the move sequence one at a time to see where it ends up. I'd think this would certainly work.

But I'm probably not good enough at getting it cubic sighted yet to have a chance of doing this. I need to work more on that part first before I can try this. But I want to someday.

I'm thinking I'm probably going to go for megaminx BLD first, though.


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## mkriegs (Jan 28, 2008)

I saw a video on youtube of someone doing a SQ1 BLD but they got it into cubic form before they even started memo. Are you saying people have done it from true scrambled state?


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## joey (Jan 28, 2008)

Yes. It could have been Lucas' video that you saw from cube form. But he and others have done it from non-cubic form.


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## Lucas Garron (Jan 29, 2008)

My UWR was two twists from cubic, so not too hard. But that was before I did speed BLD (which I tried partially for Sqaure-1).

I intend to learn the permutation effect of all the 6-corner shapes so that I can speed BLD to one of those. BUt I wanna get 4x4x4 better (and 5x5x5 BLD) first. And get a Megaminx success.


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 29, 2008)

Thanks for telling us that, Lucas. It's nice to know you didn't have some magic secret up your sleeve you weren't telling us about.

It seems like it should be not too terribly difficult to do as you mentioned learning the permutation effect of all the 6-corner shapes, and then speed BLD to one of those. It's still a lot of memorization, though. I'm still wondering if there isn't some other way that doesn't require any speed BLD to do it.

But like you, I think I want to learn to do Megaminx BLD first. And I haven't even tried that yet. I'm going to work on my memory method for big cubes and multi BLD first - I need to memorize all my letter pairs. After that, I might try Megaminx BLD next.


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## dbeyer (Jan 29, 2008)

Quoting Mike:
"I need to memorize all my 2 letter pairs. After that, I might try Megaminx BLD next."

That's a little redundant Mike. It's a letter pair 
To say that each pair has two letters, is redundant, no?

So you've decided to learn a larger image system? Congrats! Best of luck to you Mike


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 29, 2008)

dbeyer said:


> Quoting Mike:
> "I need to memorize all my 2 letter pairs. After that, I might try Megaminx BLD next."
> 
> That's a little redundant Mike. It's a letter pair
> To say that each pair has two letters, is redundant, no?


Cute. I blame my statement above on the bad head cold I have right now. 



> So you've decided to learn a larger image system? Congrats! Best of luck to you Mike



Yes, I'm planning on learning a real image system now, instead of having to invent images as I memorize a cube. At the moment, I'm still working on the list in a Word document, trying to come up with images I'm happy with for all the pairs. I now realize that I had fewer images already memorized than I originally thought.


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## joey (Jan 29, 2008)

Mike Hughey said:


> It seems like it should be not too terribly difficult to do as you mentioned learning the permutation effect of all the 6-corner shapes, and then speed BLD to one of those. It's still a lot of memorization, though. I'm still wondering if there isn't some other way that doesn't require any speed BLD to do it.


I dont think there is. Unless you can find an alogrithm that works in any shape? But I don't think thats possible.


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 29, 2008)

Well, there is at least one way to avoid speed BLD. There are theoretically only 90 possible shapes (65 if you combine in mirror images), and so if you could memorize an algorithm to get each of these cubic, and memorize the permutation effects of all of those algorithms, you would clearly be able to avoid speed BLD. The only problem with this is the massive amount of memorization involved.

I'm wondering if there's a way to group some of these together to decrease the amount of memorization necessary. Lucas's proposal is really already a step in that direction.


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## Stefan (Jan 29, 2008)

A while ago I tried to compute how many cases need to be fully learned if you allow making one initial turn speed bld style. Don't remember the number, but maybe a dozen or less. With two initial turns this of course gets reduced further, and this should then be fairly easy to learn and do.

Darn. I know this is a set cover problem, but I thought it would be more precisely be a vertex cover problem. Checking that again, I noticed I was wrong. Is there a name for the problem of having an undirected graph, a vertex considered covered iff itself or one of its neighbours is marked, and the task is to mark as few vertices as needed to cover all?


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## joey (Jan 29, 2008)

I stll think that counts as speed BLD-ish, because you still have to memorise the effect on pieces. Wether you know what the effect will be already, or trace it on the spot, I still think that counts as speed BLD-ish.


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## Stefan (Jan 29, 2008)

joey said:


> Wether you know what the effect will be already, or trace it on the spot, I still think that counts as speed BLD-ish.


Difference 1: *You* don't have to trace it at all, the computer or someone else can do it for you.
Difference 2: The tracing doesn't count into your time.


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## joey (Jan 29, 2008)

Very true. But it was exactly getting at what I was saying.
I have changed my mind though now! If you memoed all 90 (/65) shapes, and the permutations they would cause. I wouldn't count it as speed BLD, but I would say it is premoves! Whereby premoves are done before algs that cycle pieces are. 

I used to use premoves for 3x3 BLD, but havn't done for a while now.


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## Lucas Garron (Jan 30, 2008)

StefanPochmann said:


> A while ago I tried to compute how many cases need to be fully learned if you allow making one initial turn speed bld style. Don't remember the number, but maybe a dozen or less. With two initial turns this of course gets reduced further, and this should then be fairly easy to learn and do.
> 
> Darn. I know this is a set cover problem, but I thought it would be more precisely be a vertex cover problem. Checking that again, I noticed I was wrong. Is there a name for the problem of having an undirected graph, a vertex considered covered iff itself or one of its neighbours is marked, and the task is to mark as few vertices as needed to cover all?


Yeah, that's a covering (as opposed to a packing). Even Mathworld agrees for n=1. I was trying to find a covering of all Square-1 shapes using Jaap's graph in Mathematica, but that never finished. (And even kastellorizo, with a "Master's in Algebraic Graph Theory," couldn't help  !)
And then I decided it was useless. Better memorize the few 6-shapes (much less to keep in mind/refresh) and speed BLD those 4 twists to them -maybe memo those twists, too, if they're not obvious.

But I'd still love to know the minimal coverings for distances n=1 to 5.
(1 and 7 are trivial, and so is 6 if you know the graph. I know it has a diameter of 7, is any shape removed from more than one other shape by 7 twists?)


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## Stefan (Jan 30, 2008)

No, it's not the vertex cover problem. That mathworld page sucks. The definition is at best incomplete, at worst wrong. Vertex cover according to both Wikipedia and mathworld's own diagrams is a set of vertices that covers all *edges*, not all vertices.

Did you try a greedy covering, always adding the vertex that covers the most not yet covered vertices?

Did you try a minimal covering for the two-steps sets? There the sets are much larger, thus you need fewer. Probably allows brute force.

Also, there's at least one shape (double square) that's clearly an end-point, having just one neighbour. Using this neighbour for the covering is no mistake and can be done right away. Not sure whether there are more end-points, though I'd guess not.


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