# Thoughts about the BH method



## Mike Hughey (May 6, 2009)

The purpose of this thread is to share thoughts about the BH method. Since a variant of BH was recently used to break the world record for 3x3x3 BLD, I suspect there will be more interest in it now. And since I just learned BH corners (I considered it learned earlier today when I managed to go through all of the algorithms successfully from memory), I thought now would be a good time for me to give my thoughts about it.

I hope that other people will add to this thread with their own thoughts – first Chris, Daniel, and Haiyan, and then hopefully others as well as they learn to use it. I’d also like to see anyone else who has learned it to post, if you would – are there others out there who know it already?

My comments will be focused on BH corners, since I still don’t know much of the BH edges, and I certainly don’t know the other pieces on bigger cubes. So I don’t know if some of what I have to say might not apply to edges.

Of course BH is a very efficient method to solve a cube blindfolded. It has a move count that’s very low – low enough that generally only a very advanced freestyle method can beat it. But it’s also fun to learn because you begin to really understand more about the cube. Being able to move any 3 pieces on the cube at will with maximum efficiency is really cool! I really believe it has helped me a bit with fewest moves solves in the past few weeks.

I’d like to echo what both Chris Hardwick and Daniel Beyer have said in the past about the method – learning BH is very much like learning intuitive Fridrich F2L. The parallels are actually quite amazing. For those who learned intuitive Fridrich F2L, try to think back to when you learned it. For most people, I think it usually starts with understanding some building blocks, in particular the two most common ways to insert a pair: constructing a corner edge pair and then inserting it, or constructing the pair as you insert it as is done with R U R’. For BH corners, a similar thing could be said about two types of algorithms: the basic 8-move commutator (like Niklas), or the basic 9-move setup to a commutator with a canceling move, like the A perm. Once you know these two basic moves and can see how to do them and why they work, you can then begin by yourself looking for ways to apply them to each case you want to solve. Many cases are similar – mirror images, inverses, or rotated somewhere else on the cube – so once you can see it in one case, you can usually see how to do the other cases as well.

I first started looking at BH corners last year, when Daniel sent me the list of commutators. But I had some other goals and put off learning them, although I did look at them occasionally just to get a feel for how to do some of them. Then early this year I played with them a little and learned all the cases for (UBL, URB, x), for each possible third sticker x. I think that took about a week. Then about 3 weeks ago I decided to go ahead and learn the whole thing. I was very surprised to discover it only took me about 3 weeks! It’s really not that hard. In fact, for an experienced cuber, I suspect it will take you about the same amount of effort as it originally took you to learn Fridrich F2L. Really! So I’m saying that I think *it takes about as much effort for an experienced cuber to learn BH corners as it takes for a beginning cuber to learn Fridrich F2L!!!* It’s just not all that hard. You get where you can turn around the cases in your head and see where each piece needs to go to solve a case, and so you don’t really memorize the algorithm – you simply remember where the pieces need to go for each step.

I used my images list to help me learn the BH algorithms. I found it was helpful to simply go through my image list alphabetically: BC, BD, BE, BF, etc. up to VW, VX, WX. First I would find the algorithm to solve the image, such as BC, and then it would be easy enough to invert it to solve the inverse case, CB. So I worked through the list that way. In order to learn it, it was best to construct the algorithm myself if possible; I only resorted to the list to “check my answer” or if I couldn’t figure it out myself. Once I had an algorithm that I thought was optimal, I would compare it with Daniel’s list. If my algorithm had more HTM than his, it was clearly worse, and so I would learn his instead and try to understand it. If it had the same HTM, I would compare QTM. Again, if mine had more QTM than his, I would learn his instead. But if not, then I knew my algorithm was as good as his was, so I usually wouldn’t even bother to look at his to compare (unless mine was really awkward somehow). After trying to “discover” the correct algorithm like this several times, you tend to simply learn it. And you find that very quickly you can perform it as fast as you can think of the letters you need to solve. It really works shockingly well.

I know that Chris and Daniel have worked very hard to think of the commutators in classes, according to what type they are. And I guess I wound up doing that myself even though I went through them alphabetically. So, for instance, I can tell you that, for my image list, GU, UG, MU, UM, RW, WR, LW, and WL are examples of the awful columns case that I hate so much.  But perhaps other people will find it more helpful to group them like that to begin with, while learning. For me, the alphabetical approach worked well, though.

One comment I will make about bigger cubes: I’m pretty sure I can see that every one of the corner algorithms can be used directly as slice moves to solve X centers on bigger cubes. It really surprised me when I discovered that. And it actually also messed me up on 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 solves for a little while – I would start to see the BH corners algorithms, and forget how I normally do them. But it would probably be a mistake to just use these algorithms for the X centers – I could clearly see that there were a bunch of cases where those algorithms are far from optimal, especially if you consider inner slice moves to be inferior to outer slice or wide moves, which I do. So I’m now fighting hard to ignore the BH corner algorithms when I solve center pieces on big cubes BLD.

I’m starting to get fast with it; I’ve had quite a few sub-30 2x2x2 BLD solves, and several sub-2 3x3x3 BLD solves. And it was really fun – I tried 3x3x3 OH BLD last night and right away was getting close to 3 minutes, which is close to my personal best.

Anyway, I hope this rambling of mine might help inspire some other people to try it. If I can learn it, almost anyone reading this can.


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## tim (May 6, 2009)

Thanks for your post, Mike. It was really interesting to read your thoughts about BH. I considered learning BH myself, but the huge amount of algs couldn't motivate me . Your Fridrich F2L analogy makes a lot of sense and i guess i'll give it a try.
Just one question: I don't think i'll have any problems seeing the 8 moves optimal solution, but i find it quite hard to find the proper setup moves if it can't be solved in 8 moves. How hard is it to learn the setup moves for these 9/10 move cases? I'm kinda afraid, that i'll have to learn them by heart.

/edit: The algorithms look sooo scary once they are printed out . 7 pages full of characters.


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## Mike Hughey (May 6, 2009)

tim said:


> Thanks for your post, Mike. It was really interesting to read your thoughts about BH. I considered learning BH myself, but the huge amount of algs couldn't motivate me . Your Fridrich F2L analogy makes a lot of sense and i guess i'll give it a try.
> Just one question: I don't think i'll have any problems seeing the 8 moves optimal solution, but i find it quite hard to find the proper setup moves if it can't be solved in 8 moves. How hard is it to learn the setup moves for these 9/10 move cases? I'm kinda afraid, that i'll have to learn them by heart.



Generally, I had to look at the first one or two of each basic named type (the types given names by Chris and Daniel - you'll notice there are only something like ten different named types, and several of those are the 8-movers, so it's not very many), and then I started to see most of them. Some of the big ones are kind of hard to see at first, and reading through Daniel's descriptions again once you hit them can help. But I'd guess I probably only really had to look up 20 or 30 of them total; the rest I figured out on my own.

And really, the cancelling setup moves start to all look the same after a while. As Chris mentioned, there are a handful of different sub-classes of the A9's. But each of those look exactly the same across a very large number of cases. An example is (URB FRU ULF). It's exactly the same (with mirrors, inverses, and translations) as:
(URB RUF ULF)
(URB LUB ULF)
(URB BLU ULF)
(URB BLU BRD)
(URB RUF RDB)
And there are a bunch of others that look similar to this one, but with single turns instead of double turns somewhere. So you knock out a whole bunch of cases by just knowing the first one.

Definitely don't try to learn them directly by heart. Just try to see the setup moves and how the commutators work. By doing so, you will automatically learn them by heart. At least, that's what's happened for me. I didn't really try - it just magically happened. BH seems almost magical that way.

Tim, with your memory and superior speedcubing skills, I'm betting you'll probably sail through these much faster than I did, once you get going. You can probably have all the corners learned in two weeks.


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## rahulkadukar (May 6, 2009)

Mike can you please send me the complete list of Algs as I will be completely free for about 2 months


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## Mike Hughey (May 6, 2009)

rahulkadukar said:


> Mike can you please send me the complete list of Algs as I will be completely free for about 2 months



The place to go is definitely Chris's website. He's only got the corners up there now, but he'll probably have the edges up soon, and that's all I have from Daniel anyway. I'm guessing he'll have the edges up before you finish learning the corners, so that shouldn't be a problem.


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## spdcbr (May 6, 2009)

Oh...so that's what BH is...I still use the Pochmann method...Pochmann forever!


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## byu (May 6, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> rahulkadukar said:
> 
> 
> > Mike can you please send me the complete list of Algs as I will be completely free for about 2 months
> ...



Well, I've been using a TuRBo/Freestyle variant, but I haven't practiced in at least a week in a half (not sure if that's important) possibly even two weeks. Is it worth it to try learning BH? I'm interested, I might just try it.

EDIT: Wow, 378 algs, and Mike, you learned them all? I don't think I can do this...


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## joey (May 7, 2009)

Byu: You really should read Mike's post.. the whole point is it *isn't* 378 algs.


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## byu (May 7, 2009)

Oh, haha, I didn't read the whole post, I just clicked the link. Well, in that case, I'll consider trying it.


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## Mike Hughey (May 7, 2009)

I suspect that a person who's really good at freestyle (like Ville) really won't get much out of BH. Freestyle implies that you already essentially know how to solve every possible combination. But you only qualify as being "really good at freestyle" if you tend not to have very many setup moves. If you use very many setup moves, then BH could really help, since you've prelearned all the setup moves that you use, and you know you're at minimum movecount for each algorithm.

I really suspect that Ville wouldn't get much out of BH - he'd probably just get slower. Then again, I also suspect that Ville uses a lot of BH already - I bet most of his algorithms are already optimal. (Looking at the sample solves he's published here, it certainly appears that they are.) The ones that aren't movecount-optimal are probably even better - they're probably speed-optimal. (Like doing the standard 11-move U perm instead of the more move-optimal commutator.)

BH is particularly useful for me, since I'm relatively slow - movecount matters more to me than raw speed. But Haiyan has shown you can go almost as fast as Ville with BH, so the algorithms can still be pretty fast.


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## flee135 (May 7, 2009)

I have been really interested in getting faster in BLD recently, and I think BH may be the way to go for me. I really enjoy learning and incorporating commutators instead of spamming algorithms as well! I think I will give this a good look after I'm done with school exams and related things. Thanks for your thoughts, Mike!


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## deadalnix (May 7, 2009)

I use BH for big blind, but not for corners and edges.

Mike is right, learning BH is like F2L. You have some basics cases and variations.

I'm currently learning this method for corners. I still use a customized M2 method for edges, because I find this more finger friendly. I use commutators when on piece is in the M slice, so I avoid all crapy cases and UF/DB slot swapping.

Anyway, the way I use M2 can be seen as commutators, but with non optimal move count.

BH is really easy to learn for wing and center of big cubes. It's harder for corner because you moce half of the stickers in each move so set-up with cancelling move are harder to find. But it's really easier than it seems !


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## mazei (May 7, 2009)

I finally learned to create commutators of my own since I was thinking of learning BH. After learning commutators I start to wonder:

1. Is BH basically doing commutators but with a fixed buffer?
2. What happens if there is 2 2-cycle of edges?(I'm guessing more commutators)
3. If freestyle just doing optimal commutators?(So far all I know is that freestyle is basically doing permutations while orientating)

Sorry if these questions don't seem to fit here but to me these questions will sorta help me decide on what to do next.


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## deadalnix (May 7, 2009)

mazei said:


> 1. Is BH basically doing commutators but with a fixed buffer?



yes



mazei said:


> 2. What happens if there is 2 2-cycle of edges?(I'm guessing more commutators)



You break into new cycle. For exemple if you have to solve AB and CD (where ABC and D are things to solves, edges or whatever you want) then you can pack the whole thing into ABCDC.

Finaly you do ABC then ADC.



mazei said:


> 3. If freestyle just doing optimal commutators?(So far all I know is that freestyle is basically doing permutations while orientating)



Freestyle is freestyle. You do whatever you want 

You can consider that BH is a freestyle method.


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## dbeyer (May 9, 2009)

BH is a freestyle method that can be compiled to a finite number of cases.
You have broader control factors than most methods.
Pochmann -- Solving one piece at a time. Hence only 21 cases to optimally learn. You can squeeze by with one algorithm, and use a lot of setups. You could learn three algorithms to cycle a corner to its polar opposite. To reduce the number of setup moves to 1 move max per cycle.
3OP -- You orient first, so that only U/D stickers are cycled. You are looking at 42 possible cycles starting from any corner.
This takes extra moves, and there is more to memorize. It also brings into play the 12-move cases are more frequenct, as are the 11-move cases.
I do not believe that any case can be optimally solved in 10 moves, when you oriented all corners to the U/D layer.
You normally freestyle these setups, and hate when you run into a 12-move case. Most would actually solve these cases with far greater moves anyway (Though quick triggers are involved.)
Cancelations are lost, and setups are added.
Turbo -- Your control is setting up everything to the U layer as efficiently as possible, and doing a really fast algorithm.
BH -- Finally. You have center safe algs (always no matter what). They can be applied to big cubes blind. You are no longer controling the situation. You are able to look at each problem and solve it optimally and quickly, by dealving deeper into what the case really is. You notice more patterns. Rather than solving the cube layer by layer, and doing a 4LLL (or more), you move to CFOP. This is the greatest understanding of optimally solving the cube. Your have fewer reservations about what you control. 
BH's goal: Directly and efficiently solve any cycle.
Breaking into cycles, rather than freestyling.
No setups to the U layer. No orient first methods.
-- By limiting the cycles to always involving one piece, the buffer. There is still a finite number of cases, because you are limiting yourself by cycling 3 pieces at a time. I mean certainly, you could learn all 9072 cases. By picking three random stickers from three separate cubies. (24x21x18)
By restricting yourself to a buffer and only cycling three pieces at a time. BH correlates to letter pair memory systems. Since you always cycle from a buffer, you just need to know what the next two pieces are -- the next letter pair image!

It's an amazing concept. 
More to come. I'm glad that the interest has peaked. 

Later,
DB


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## dbeyer (May 9, 2009)

There are classifications, that allow you to truly understand the method. Using it more like an F2L approach. You aren't learning algorithms, you are recognizing relations between the 3 pieces in space. I have described in detail these cases on corners. Edges, centers, and wings will come. It's an amazing method. I trust that you will all be quite pleased. 
In the last 2 years, I have worked with Chris. His world Records have been cut into a third of what it was back then. Our memory techniques, execution methods, and theory for cutting time and delays have made him a great cuber. Its time that everybody else reap in our knowlege on the theory of blindfolded cubing as a whole.


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## McWizzle94 (May 9, 2009)

You know, I think I have actually been practicing BH without even knowing it, by practicing freestyle with a fixed buffer. The only thing I do differently might be the setups...


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## mazei (Sep 21, 2009)

Hey, can someone explain to me about the orientation of inactive corners? Perhaps a few example solves. I've been playing around with BH and just improvised on the corners but I'm not sure if its right.

Oh, and can someone help me with recognizing the cases? I understand the commutators used, although I jumble up their names(yeah, I use the names to assign to a type of case), I still get what commutators to use for the cases(half of the time non-optimal). But at most times, I take a monstrous amount of time trying to recognize the case or think of the commutator to use. Help?


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## cmhardw (Sep 21, 2009)

mazei said:


> Hey, can someone explain to me about the orientation of inactive corners? Perhaps a few example solves. I've been playing around with BH and just improvised on the corners but I'm not sure if its right.
> 
> Oh, and can someone help me with recognizing the cases? I understand the commutators used, although I jumble up their names(yeah, I use the names to assign to a type of case), I still get what commutators to use for the cases(half of the time non-optimal). But at most times, I take a monstrous amount of time trying to recognize the case or think of the commutator to use. Help?



Glad to see that you're interested in the BH method! I'm obviously a little biased in my opinion here, but I think it is a great way to solve the 3x3x3 BLD, and definitely one of the easiest ways to solve bigger cubes BLD.

For permuted but disoriented corners I use double sune algs and setups to twist them. Algs like R' U2 R U R' U R L U2 L' U' L U' L' and its inverse. Daniel sometimes cycles to the corners and then places them back into their locations, or he might use orienting algs as well. He is a bit more versatile than I am when it comes to handling those corners.

As for easy ways to recognize the cycles, you *must* learn what we call viewpoint shifting. I use viewpoint shifting nearly every solve, sometimes more than once on a single solve.

Hope this helps! Also check out Brian's BH resources thread, there's a lot of good information there.

Chris


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 21, 2009)

cmhardw said:


> As for easy ways to recognize the cycles, you *must* learn what we call viewpoint shifting. I use viewpoint shifting nearly every solve, sometimes more than once on a single solve.



I have to admit that I don't do viewpoint shifting for BH corners. Very occasionally, if I get completely stuck (meaning I've taken 15 to 30 seconds, meaning my BH recall was a complete failure on that particular solve), I might do viewpoint shifting, but generally I don't. I know how to do it (although I'm slow at it), but it seems to me like I should be able to see the algorithm instantly without a viewpoint shift for every case in BH corners anyway, so I don't really see the point in practicing viewpoint shifting. Maybe that's holding me back, but I have yet to be convinced it will help.


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## mazei (Sep 21, 2009)

Perhaps I haven't used BH enough to actually get it to a more 'braindead' situation like Fridrich. Then again, the only commutator I've been using consistently is A-perm but I don't even look at it in a commutator way. So I definitely need to practice commutators more.

Solves with BH corners(just corners) for me have been ranging from 1:30 to about 4 minutes. This includes memo which I just do visually(tapping).


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## cmhardw (Sep 21, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> I know how to do it (although I'm slow at it), but it seems to me like I should be able to see the algorithm instantly without a viewpoint shift for every case in BH corners anyway, so I don't really see the point in practicing viewpoint shifting.



Yes I suppose that ideally you should be able to identify and see each case without viewpoint shifting. I view it as a compromise between efficiency and speed. Ideally I should be able to solve the Rubik's cube in sub-35 moves every time, however I find it to be faster to solve in 55 moves with less efficiency. I treat viewpoint shifting the same way. Sure I should be able to identify each case from the angle given, but I find it to be faster to just viewpoint shift the difficult cases.

Here is an example of a case that I *can* recognize from the angle by itself, but even still I have a difficult time picturing the commutator. I find it to not only be faster, but much easier, to always viewpoint shift on this case:

UBL -> BUR -> FUL

When I see this case, especially when going quickly, I am tempted to think it's a Cyclic Shift, but it's actually an A9. If you viewpoint shift every sticker once clockwise you can see that it's:

LUB -> RBU -> LFU
which is easily done as: R B2 R F2 R' B2 R F2 R2

I am learning to recognize more cases from the actual angle without viewpoint shifting, and maybe it is a crutch that I should stop using, but I find it to speed up my recognition. Perhaps this is only the beginner version, and I should work up to identifying all cases from the original angle. I never thought about that.

--edit--


mazei said:


> Then again, the only commutator I've been using consistently is A-perm but I don't even look at it in a commutator way.



To get used to seeing the A perm as a commutator try solving cycles like:
UBL -> BUR -> BRD
UBL -> BRD -> BUR
UBL -> FRU -> FDR
UBL -> FDR -> FRU

They are essentially variations on the A perm.

Chris


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 21, 2009)

cmhardw said:


> Here is an example of a case that I *can* recognize from the angle by itself, but even still I have a difficult time picturing the commutator. I find it to not only be faster, but much easier, to always viewpoint shift on this case:
> 
> UBL -> BUR -> FUL



Funny - I think of that as one of the easier ones to see directly.  Although I will admit it's pretty to look at it from the viewpoint shift perspective too - I never looked at that one that way before, and it's certainly pretty.

It just goes to show you that different people see things differently. Certainly viewpoint shifting is a very useful tool when you're first learning BH.


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## byu (Oct 2, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> cmhardw said:
> 
> 
> > Here is an example of a case that I *can* recognize from the angle by itself, but even still I have a difficult time picturing the commutator. I find it to not only be faster, but much easier, to always viewpoint shift on this case:
> ...



Looking at UBL -> BUR -> FUL

I am having a more difficult time seeing the commutator here than I normally would probably due to the fact that I usually use URB as my buffer instead of UBL. But just by rotating the cube, it seems to me that the _optimal_ algorithm would be:

R B2 R F2 R' B2 R F2 R2

Which I would actually execute as:

x' R U2 R D2 R' U2 R D2 R2 x

Which is an A9 case, a 9 move optimal solution, unless I am much mistaken.

However, I myself find it easier to perform most A9s as 10 move commutators (8 move, one setup, no cancellation). Though slower, processing for me requires less thinking, and therefore is just slightly faster.

I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to execute A9s better.


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 2, 2009)

byu said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > cmhardw said:
> ...


That's how I do it, yes. I really like that one now that this discussion happened - it's one of the quickest for me to see now because we talked about it. 



byu said:


> However, I myself find it easier to perform most A9s as 10 move commutators (8 move, one setup, no cancellation). Though slower, processing for me requires less thinking, and therefore is just slightly faster.
> 
> I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to execute A9s better.



I have decided to never abandon an optimal commutator if it is because it requires less thinking; I figure I can always overcome that by drilling it some more so that's no longer the case. For cases where I can execute faster, though, I've abandoned some cases. For instance, I go ahead and execute the following case:
UBL -> DFR -> UFR
as
y' (R2 D R2 D' R2 U2) * 2 y
simply because I'm actually reasonably fast at that algorithm. I can see the 11-mover, but I just can't execute it as fast.

Chris, I tried to learn to do the 11-mover for it - I used it for about 4 months - but I finally gave up on it because it was so noticeably slower than this, and it just wasn't improving enough with practice. Maybe I can try again someday when I'm a faster speedcuber.


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## cmhardw (Oct 2, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> For cases where I can execute faster, though, I've abandoned some cases. For instance, I go ahead and execute the following case:
> UBL -> DFR -> UFR
> as
> y' (R2 D R2 D' R2 U2) * 2 y
> ...



Were you using L' U' R2 U' L U R2 U' L' U2 L?

You might also like:
R' F' R2 F' L F R2 F' L' F2 R which can be executed as: x R' U' R2 U' L U R2 U' L' U2 R x' (which incidentally I might switch to, because it is very fast!)

There's also the "Caltech style" of:
(R' F R F')*3 U2 (R' F R F')*3 U2

I do sometimes use sub-optimal algs if they are faster as well. For example the case:
UBL -> BDL -> URB

You can do this optimally with a Drop and Catch using U' B D B' U B D' B'

However I find it much easier/faster to use a B9 alg:
U R' D2 R U R' D2 R U2

To each his/her own I say. The BH guidelines is just a philosophy to guide you toward using optimal commutators if they work best. I guess the most fundamental idea behind BH is really "Use braindead, pre-decided algs for all possible 3 cycles of two stickers, starting from a fixed buffer." This way it leaves a lot of wiggle room for personalizing the method.

Chris


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 2, 2009)

cmhardw said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > For cases where I can execute faster, though, I've abandoned some cases. For instance, I go ahead and execute the following case:
> ...


Actually, no, I was using y' L U R2 U L' U' R2 U L U2 L' y.
Yours is nice in that it doesn't have the cube rotation (which really doesn't slow it down much, but maybe a little). Maybe I'll try that if I ever try changing again. 



cmhardw said:


> You might also like:
> R' F' R2 F' L F R2 F' L' F2 R
> 
> There's also the "Caltech style" of:
> (R' F R F')*3 U2 (R' F R F')*3 U2


I must admit I don't like either of those. But they are interesting alternatives.



cmhardw said:


> I do sometimes use sub-optimal algs if they are faster as well. For example the case:
> UBL -> BDL -> URB
> 
> You can do this optimally with a Drop and Catch using U' B D B' U B D' B'


I do it this way. I'm finding it can get faster with practice...



cmhardw said:


> However I find it much easier/faster to use a B9 alg:
> U R' D2 R U R' D2 R U2


But this is pretty amazingly better. I think I may have to switch.



cmhardw said:


> To each his/her own I say. The BH guidelines is just a philosophy to guide you toward using optimal commutators if they work best. I guess the most fundamental idea behind BH is really "Use braindead, pre-decided algs for all possible 3 cycles of two stickers, starting from a fixed buffer." This way it leaves a lot of wiggle room for personalizing the method.


I like this definition for BH. I've been using this to slowly customize M2 for edges until it's almost like BH. Basically, I just treat each pair of M2 single-piece algorithms as if it were a BH edges "candidate", and then optimize it if I don't think it's fast enough. Right now I probably only use pure M2 for about 1/3 of the edge pair cases. Probably 30% of my edge cases are now using optimal algorithms for a given pair, and most of the rest are fairly fast.


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## deadalnix (Oct 21, 2009)

I just dicover this alg which is pretty nice for BH :

uR2D'R2'u'R2uR2'DR2u'R2'

It look ugly, but it's very finger friendly


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## cmhardw (Oct 21, 2009)

deadalnix said:


> I just dicover this alg which is pretty nice for BH :
> 
> uR2D'R2'u'R2uR2'DR2u'R2'
> 
> It look ugly, but it's very finger friendly



I posted this same alg in another thread, but I think I must have misunderstood the case people were looking for.

For the case you posted I think your alg is good, but I really think Daniel Beyer's alg cannot be beaten in terms of speed and ease of execution. It is so incredibly fast, and with some practice easy to visualize during a blindfolded solve. It would take quite an amazing alg for me to switch to something different:

U l2 U' l2 U' R2 U l2 U l2 U' R2

Chris

P.S. Hey Amaury!


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## deadalnix (Oct 21, 2009)

oO

I really don't see how this alg can be fast. I have tried several thing, but none is fast. Can you describe how to do it ?


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## cmhardw (Oct 21, 2009)

deadalnix said:


> oO
> 
> I really don't see how this alg can be fast. I have tried several thing, but none is fast. Can you describe how to do it ?



Well, when I say fast I mean faster than all the others algs I have tried. On my best cube I probably average around 3.5 seconds to execute this alg, and I can get singles under 3 seconds.

I execute it like this:
U ^ (l)2 (U')* (l')2 (U')** R2 U ^ (l)2 U (l')2 (U')** R2

^ high grip (left thumb on U face, left fingers on D face)
*pull with left ring finger
** left index finger

The alternating directions of the double l layer, and the high grips before starting them is what helps speed up the alg a lot.

Chris


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## trying-to-speedcube... (Oct 21, 2009)

I still don't understand what that alg is good for... :confused:


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## deadalnix (Oct 21, 2009)

This is very nice !

Adopted 

The reverse is nice also.


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## cmhardw (Oct 21, 2009)

trying-to-speedcube... said:


> I still don't understand what that alg is good for... :confused:



Maarten, it does the corner sticker cycle:
URB -> DRF -> DLB

And it's amazingly fast (comparatively) 

Chris


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## trying-to-speedcube... (Oct 21, 2009)

I end up doing a corner 5-cycle and an edge 3-cycle with that alg. Is...

Oh, wait. I was still thinking bigcubes. Sorry  It's an awesome alg indeed


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## MatsBergsten (Oct 21, 2009)

trying-to-speedcube... said:


> I end up doing a corner 5-cycle and an edge 3-cycle with that alg. Is...
> 
> Oh, wait. I was still thinking bigcubes. Sorry  It's an awesome alg indeed



@Maarten: Ha, I did like you, took a 4x4 and executed the alg to see what it did. Ended up with nothing nice at all  

Then I read your post and understood  too

@Chris: This is one of the few cases where I have not used the BH-corner-alg but a 13-mover of my own (which I thought was easier to turn and remember). But this is way better, I agree.


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## cubeninjaIV (Oct 21, 2009)

i gave up BLD a looong time ago (got irritating and time consuming.)


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 21, 2009)

cubeninjaIV said:


> i gave up BLD a looong time ago (got irritating and time consuming.)



I gave up 3x3x3 speedcubing a while ago too (got irritating and time consuming).

Then I discovered that getting better at 3x3x3 speedcubing actually helps my BLD results more than just about anything else I can do. So now I am pretty heavily practicing 3x3x3 speedcubing. But it's still irritating and time consuming. I just do it because it helps me get better at BLD, which is fun. 

Just goes to show you that different people value things differently, I guess.


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## Edmund (Oct 21, 2009)

I wish I could solve blind.


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## deadalnix (Oct 21, 2009)

Edmund said:


> I wish I could solve blind.



So work your blind instead of posting unrevelant things into a BH related topic.


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## CT_Warrior (Nov 13, 2009)

I started learning BH recently (very late, I know, haha), so I was wondering how one could optimize BH for speed rather than for move count.

I started working on the first 30 cases, and so far it seems pretty fast.
Which cases would need to optimized and how would they be optimized?


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## cmhardw (Nov 13, 2009)

CT_Warrior said:


> I started learning BH recently (very late, I know, haha), so I was wondering how one could optimize BH for speed rather than for move count.
> 
> I started working on the first 30 cases, and so far it seems pretty fast.
> Which cases would need to optimized and how would they be optimized?



I would say to use the U PLL alg in a lot of the edge cases. The reason we optimize for move count is to be able to use the entire method on bigger cubes. Technically the page that talks about 3x3x3 corners and 3x3x3 edges that Daniel and I made up should be titled "corners on the n x n x n cube" and "central edges on any odd n x n x n cube"

As for optimizing for speed, basically if an alg sucks then just use a PLL that is faster. I also recommend to use all of the "Slice-Plane" type edge commutators, as they are crazy fast on 3x3x3 compared to the supercube safe versions.

Sorry that this post will not really be all that much help. Daniel and my focus is really to be able to have a fast and efficient method for big cubes. It just so happens that using BH is possible on the 3x3x3, but we did not intend the method to maximize the speed for 3x3x3.

I would say that the BH corner algs would be hard to beat in terms of speed, unless you are just really crazy fast at your A perms. I think Haiyan might disagree with me on this point  but I think that BH corners would already be fairly well optimized for speed already. BH edges would have a long way to go to being optimized for speed, because there are a lot more capabilities on 3x3x3 since the U perm is just so incredibly fast. Seriously though, the "Slice-Plane" commutator type which works on 3x3x3 just can't be beaten in terms of speed: *M' U2 M U2*. I'm sure a huge number of algs could be speed optimized using Slice-Plane algs compared to even a U perm.

Hope this at least helps a tiny bit,
Chris


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## CT_Warrior (Nov 13, 2009)

I see, that was pretty helpful, thanks. 

I'll definitely learn BH corners since I pretty much agree that it's fast. I've already started to hate R2 after playing with BH for a bit.

I think I'll learn DIADEM for edges since it seems exactly like the speed-optimal method I was looking for.


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## cmhardw (Nov 13, 2009)

CT_Warrior said:


> I think I'll learn DIADEM for edges since it seems exactly like the speed-optimal method I was looking for.



At the risk of receiving a :fp I do have to ask, what is the DIADEM method for edges? I've searched the forum, google, and the Wiki and can't find anything relating to it.

Chris


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## CT_Warrior (Nov 13, 2009)

It's Deadalnix's Edge Method.
Not sure how he derived the acronym, but oh well.

He has a beta page of his method out for those who wanted to learn or check it out earlier that you can ask for, but it's not quite public yet.


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## deadalnix (Nov 19, 2009)

Hi chris,

effectively, this is the name I gave to my method for edges. This some kind of bastard child between BH and M2. Anyway, BH where not so well known when I invent the first version so I didn't inspire myself of it. It's more something like a parallel progress. But M2 was obviously a big inspiration.

I have discussed this in the M2 tutorial, and a tutorial is under progress. But due to personal issues, I'm very late.

Anyway, if you are interested, a draft english version is done, and it's very close to the final version. I have to correct some details (mainly langage details because english isn't my langage).

Finaly, the method require more moves than BH, but is more finger friendly and require less thinking (or less learning if you want to do it braindead). It's big cube safe, but I present also some shortcut that aren't center safe, mostly based on M'U2MU2 which is really fast.

The method can be adapted to wing I think, but theyre are some special case I have solution for yet. Most of patterns can be used « as this » on wing, but theyre are extra patterns like when you have 2 adjacent wings.


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## Sakarie (Dec 25, 2009)

*How to train BH corners?*

One question about training BH; I can find every cycle in about ten seconds, but i want it two be 4-5. How do I most effective train? I just started to time doing all the 18 cycles starting with URF, and then RFU and so on, but is that the best way to go?

Only using BH for corners.


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## deadalnix (Dec 25, 2009)

It's what I do when I'm training, and also solving some cube using BH, but looking at the cube.


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## mazei (Dec 27, 2009)

I would scramble, start the timer, and try to solve corners with BH as fast as possible.


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## MatsBergsten (Dec 28, 2009)

Sakarie said:


> One question about training BH; I can find every cycle in about ten seconds, but i want it two be 4-5. How do I most effective train? I just started to time doing all the 18 cycles starting with URF, and then RFU and so on, but is that the best way to go?
> 
> Only using BH for corners.



One thing I did was to solve the 2x2 bld a lot, using BH.


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## deadalnix (Dec 28, 2009)

2x2x2 can be easily speedblinded


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## MatsBergsten (Dec 28, 2009)

deadalnix said:


> 2x2x2 can be easily speedblinded



Not by me it cannot . But I explicitly said 2x2 BLD using BH.

The 2x2 BLD in itself is not the funniest event, maybe if you can speedblind it is.
In my opinion 4x4 BLD is the best event of all. Not too long, not too short. A 
splendid mix of speed and memory and method


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## mazei (Dec 29, 2009)

MatsBergsten said:


> In my opinion 4x4 BLD is the best event of all. Not too long, not too short. A
> splendid mix of speed and memory and method



Not for me. But I do enjoy it in a certain way as well.


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## Sakarie (Jan 12, 2010)

Practised Corner commutators, by doing all of the threecycles (21x18=378). 
I did them in sets of 18, by doing URB>UFR>[all of them], and so on. The average was about 2:35, with the highest at 3:03 (BLU), and the lowest at 1:36 (UBL). 

How's that compared to you? How low should I be able to come?


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 12, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> Practised Corner commutators, by doing all of the threecycles (21x18=378).
> I did them in sets of 18, by doing URB>UFR>[all of them], and so on. The average was about 2:35, with the highest at 3:03 (BLU), and the lowest at 1:36 (UBL).
> 
> How's that compared to you? How low should I be able to come?



I can do most of them between 1:30 and 2:00, so it sounds like you're doing pretty well compared to me. I'm terribly slow turning, though.


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## mazei (Jan 12, 2010)

Well I hope I can get sub-2 with BH corners. Still using visual(tapping) for memo. I tried letters but I felt that it was too troublesome. Any ideas for the corner memo system?


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## cmhardw (Jan 12, 2010)

mazei said:


> Well I hope I can get sub-2 with BH corners. Still using visual(tapping) for memo. I tried letters but I felt that it was too troublesome. Any ideas for the corner memo system?



If you don't like letters this may be even more troublesome, but single syllable words has been, for me, the easiest to use, and quickest, memory system I've ever tried for corners.

Good luck with your BH corner practice! Corners are one of my favorite parts of the solve, because it goes so quickly with commutators!

Chris


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## Swordsman Kirby (Jan 12, 2010)

cmhardw said:


> single syllable words



I may adapt this method up to 5x5BLD. I don't think it scales that well for multi, etc. Also, I noticed an error in your words, namely "Zool (XU)." It's actually "Zuul."


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 12, 2010)

Swordsman Kirby said:


> cmhardw said:
> 
> 
> > single syllable words
> ...



I haven't bothered with learning a new set of single-syllable words for corners, but I use a sort of halfway implementation of this. I use the same image words that I normally use, but I don't use them as images. Instead, I treat them as verbal utterances. The problem is that some of them aren't single-syllable, so it takes longer than Chris, but it's probably not that big of a loss. And some of my words easily shorten to single syllables, and if it's obvious I'll just use those. It's still quite fast and required a lot less work than inventing a whole second set of words. And for multi, I just do the same thing, but I actually use the images as pictures, instead of just words.


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## Sakarie (Jan 12, 2010)

Mike Hughey said:


> Sakarie said:
> 
> 
> > Practised Corner commutators, by doing all of the threecycles (21x18=378).
> ...



You are, according to yourself, turning very slow, and I'm obviusly much slower than you. Still, you say that I'm doing pretty well! That's kind of you!


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 12, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> You are, according to yourself, turning very slow, and I'm obviusly much slower than you. Still, you say that I'm doing pretty well! That's kind of you!


Sorry, I guess that might have looked bad. I said you were doing pretty well compared to me, not that you're doing pretty well. You have some sets that you can do as fast as I do, and it looks like you just need to work on the others to get them as fast. Since I'm slow turning, and I've been practicing them all for a long time now (8 months or so), I'm guessing that means that with a little work, you'll probably be about 1:00 on all of them and blow right past me.


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## MatsBergsten (Jan 13, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > I can do most of them between 1:30 and 2:00, so it sounds like you're doing pretty well compared to me. I'm terribly slow turning, though.
> ...



You must understand the difference between a Master and an Apprentice!


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## Sakarie (Jan 14, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> Practised Corner commutators, by doing all of the threecycles (21x18=378).
> I did them in sets of 18, by doing URB>UFR>[all of them], and so on. The average was about 2:35, with the highest at 3:03 (BLU), and the lowest at 1:36 (UBL).
> 
> How's that compared to you? How low should I be able to come?



I have yesterday and today practised several hours on this exclusively, and I just recently broke the 1:25-barrier, in average! I know, that means that I'm now better in average, than my best 2-3 days ago. I will do some of them again, because since I always do the one with my worst time, I've done the UBR->BLU-set like 12 times, and UBR->ULB-set only twice. That means that I can still lower my times by 20-30% on some of them, like 3-4.

Highest time 1:31, lowest 1:07, but half of them are over 1:25.

I'm very satisfied with my on results on this exercise, but I don't know how much it will help on actual solves. Anyway, it can't hurt my recognition! 

Anyone know another exercise that's good?


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 14, 2010)

Heh - I was right. You did blow right past me.

Nice job!

And I do suspect it will save you several seconds on an average solve, which is pretty good return for such a small time investment.

I should really do a little more of this - I suspect I can get down to a 1:30 average if I work hard on it for a week or so. If you can do it in a few hours, I can probably almost do it in a week.


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## Sakarie (Jan 15, 2010)

Mike Hughey said:


> I should really do a little more of this - I suspect I can get down to a 1:30 average if I work hard on it for a week or so. If you can do it in a few hours, I can probably almost do it in a week.



Just to clarify, since this two days were off at school, I think that we're talking 10-12 hours, and it's probably only when you're young you have that amount of time.

Also, I think that in 5-6 days, I will have lost a lot, and my average would probably be 2-2,5 minutes again.


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## MatsBergsten (Jan 15, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> Also, I think that in 5-6 days, I will have lost a lot, and my average would probably be 2-2,5 minutes again.



No, you will lose a little if you don't use it but if you then use it in normal solves (not the crazy kind of practise you do now ) it will speedily come back.

Edit: And I thought that I practised a lot


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## Sakarie (Jan 15, 2010)

MatsBergsten said:


> Sakarie said:
> 
> 
> > Also, I think that in 5-6 days, I will have lost a lot, and my average would probably be 2-2,5 minutes again.
> ...



Haha, usually I'm not practising near that much. I'm still not that routined that I can make solve after solve, so in 5-6 solves I have to not blind more for a couple of hours.


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 15, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> MatsBergsten said:
> 
> 
> > Sakarie said:
> ...



Oh, so then your memorization approach just needs work. With a good memorization approach, you should be able to do them all day long.


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## Micael (Jan 15, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> MatsBergsten said:
> 
> 
> > Sakarie said:
> ...



I understand this as I was like that too. There are no magical trick, train hard . If you use method of loci, then build many of them. I use 24 "rooms" designed for 1 cube each (or a kind of piece for big cubes). This is very useful for a lot of bld in a single day. I had to use 16 in my last/only competition - also it appears (just calculated it now) I will need 27 for Washington DC


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## Sakarie (Jan 15, 2010)

Mike Hughey said:


> Sakarie said:
> 
> 
> > MatsBergsten said:
> ...



How do you mean? What do I do "wrong"=How can I advance? I'm using partially Loci, partially audible memo, with letters.



Micael said:


> I understand this as I was like that too. There are no magical trick, train hard . If you use method of loci, then build many of them. I use 24 "rooms" designed for 1 cube each (or a kind of piece for big cubes). This is very useful for a lot of bld in a single day. I had to use 16 in my last/only competition - also it appears (just calculated it now) I will need 27 for Washington DC



Right now I'm using only two routes, but with 12 stations on each, with four letters on every station. On Cubing Day in Stockholm, I used every station 4-5 times.


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 15, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> How do you mean? What do I do "wrong"=How can I advance? I'm using partially Loci, partially audible memo, with letters.


If you're using Loci, do you use images made out of your letters? If so, you might get a big improvement by using prepared images for your letters (if you're not already doing that - I can't remember if you've ever said you do or not). If you use a two-letters-per-image scheme, you'll find you don't reuse the images that often, and it really helps me do lots of BLD in one day without problems. I know I really saw an improvement after I memorized my letter pair image list. But I should mention that Tim Habermaas uses just a single letter per image and gets great results too, so it doesn't have to go that way. Tim can do big bunches of BLD solves in a row with no problem as well.

Actually, I don't bother with loci when I do 3x3x3 BLD; for me it's just to small to need it. I just imagine my stories with images without bothering with locations to put them, and it's enough. I only memorize edges with images; I do corners with just the words "verbally" repeated in my head. The corners never cause me problems to do over and over again - the verbal memory clears itself almost instantly from solve to solve. The images caused me problems for a while, but with practice I've gotten where they don't bother me much either.

I don't know - maybe it really is mainly just practice, like Micael says. Practice doing averages of 25 in a single sitting, if you have the time. I'm pretty sure yoruichi would think that was too short to even count as an actual practice session.  (Then again, that would only take him a half hour to do.)


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## Micael (Jan 15, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> Right now I'm using only two routes, but with 12 stations on each, with four letters on every station. On Cubing Day in Stockholm, I used every station 4-5 times.



For me, memorization is faster, easier and safer with rested routes.


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## Sakarie (Jan 15, 2010)

I have posted my current memo-method in the memo-method thread instead, since it kind of feels that I dragged this one out of it's topic. 

http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?p=306921#post306921

I've thought about having fixed letterpair-images, but I haven't yet, because I'm worried that it would just give me bad/boring word-pairs (when combined), who's harder to remember. I have also thought on doing corners with visual/tapping, but I'm afraid of sucking with it!


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## Mike Hughey (Jan 15, 2010)

Sakarie said:


> I have posted my current memo-method in the memo-method thread instead, since it kind of feels that I dragged this one out of it's topic.
> 
> http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?p=306921#post306921
> 
> I've thought about having fixed letterpair-images, but I haven't yet, because I'm worried that it would just give me bad/boring word-pairs (when combined), who's harder to remember. I have also thought on doing corners with visual/tapping, but I'm afraid of sucking with it!



Well, it seems like it's a pretty good approach, and I know some of the best people use similar ones. So maybe it really is just practice.


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## abunickabhi (Sep 30, 2018)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b3tT8Wv18WdzFyY7FujyptwzYeWFH8K-UXTddTvwUWw/edit?usp=sharing

After being inspired by BH method for over 5 years , I have come up with an upgrade on it. I hope I have done justice to it.


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## mark49152 (Sep 30, 2018)

I read your document quite quickly as I was short of time, but I didn't see any ideas on breaking down 5-style and making it more manageable. That's essential otherwise it just remains an unrealistic pipedream. The doc just seems to describe how hard it is and illustrate the theoretical benefits should anyone ever actually learn it, but that's not particularly helpful to learning it. Did I miss something?


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## h2f (Oct 1, 2018)

Are there 3style reconstruction with floating buffers to compare with 5style? They are the biggest step forward in recent years in 3bld.


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## lucarubik (Oct 1, 2018)

h2f said:


> Are there 3style reconstruction with floating buffers to compare with 5style? They are the biggest step forward in recent years in 3bld.


is there somewhere i can read about how to floating buffers? it sounds like both a simple and a bad idea, so im thinking im missing a way to make it consistent, the "step forward" you are tlakin about


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## Underwatercuber (Oct 1, 2018)

h2f said:


> Are there 3style reconstruction with floating buffers to compare with 5style? They are the biggest step forward in recent years in 3bld.


 not sure what you mean by the “to compare with 5style” part but there are a few places you can find walkthroughs/recons with floating. Off the top of my head I can think of some of Jake klassens walkthroughs, Josh Weimer has a vid, and then just going on Facebook in the bld support group lots of people can help you with stuff there


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## h2f (Oct 1, 2018)

Underwatercuber said:


> not sure what you mean by the “to compare with 5style” part but there are a few places you can find walkthroughs/recons with floating.



Sorry I was reffering to @abunickabhi document. He compares 3style solves and 5cycle solves taking number of moves. Sorry for not being clear in this point.



lucarubik said:


> is there somewhere i can read about how to floating buffers? it sounds like both a simple and a bad idea, so im thinking im missing a way to make it consistent, the "step forward" you are tlakin about



Mostly via FB and yt. For example Jake Klassen's channel. I dont do floating.


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## lucarubik (Oct 2, 2018)

just watched a 7 min video called how to floating buffers (advanced) and orientation and even number of pieces cycles are still a problem, as it has always been to me to even consider this. now i wouldnt normally say that a method being hard makes a method bad, but i don't think you can get used to the ambiguities of using two buffers, never as good as using one, not in a lifte time. having to focus on weather if the cycles have a closed orientation or not, etc, mainly etc, so im gonna go ahead and say im not a fan, since there are no actual game changers. of course if i see a U perm, or an H or a Z perm ill do them, i think everyone does that, and when i do it its barely better. while it might be "good" to really work on it its definitely not "worth it", same for 5 cycles, i'd call a step forward a way to learn all 5 cycles easily or a way to use floating buffers consistantly, even when one of the two problems appear. this reminds me of swapping pieces during memo when parity; a dirty, overated solution. I give value to having to worry about less things. i could almost meassure it in time.
if someone has actually worked on it and calculated when its worht it to go for it and by how much, and by how much is better to be willing to go for it and these things im not so sure about i'd love to read about it ofc


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 2, 2018)

I've been under the impression that most of the top BLD solvers in the world now do in fact use floating buffers. I assumed that it was just true that enough practice made it possible to be totally reliable and good at that. But if there are top BLD solvers who don't use floating buffers, I'd love to know about it! Maybe it would be a useful thing to survey them.

I know I'm very slow, even with big cubes, so my opinions aren't worth much. But I'll offer my experience anyway: I used floating buffers for center pieces on big cubes BLD for many years. I liked the way that sometimes using floating buffers would give me the chance to cut a few commutators off my solve on a lucky scramble, compared to those who didn't use floating buffers, and I'm convinced I won a few competitions that way.  But a couple of years ago, when I came back to cubing after having taken a break for a couple of years, I decided it might be a good idea to try not using the floating buffers to see how it went. And I did find that I seemed to be faster and more reliable without them. Even though it was often true I would get to skip a commutator or two on a big cube (sometimes three or four or even more on 5BLD, and even more on really big cubes BLD), the memorization was a little trickier, and solving was also a little trickier. By always sticking with fixed buffers, everything became more braindead, and for me at my mediocre level, it really improved my speed and also my accuracy.

But I still think it's feasible that floating buffers might be a real benefit for people who are world-class at BLD. I am curious if it's true.


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## mark49152 (Oct 2, 2018)

I think simple floating is quite easy. For example, when there is a single corner 3-cycle involving one U face sticker and two D layer stickers. It saves a whole comm just to set up the U face sticker to the buffer position, and there's no side effect to the setup to think about.

Similarly, a 2-cycle can sometimes be done as a 2c2e PLL, saving a comm.

Of course, the challenge is to think fast enough to execute these shortcut solutions without wasting more time than you save .


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## abunickabhi (Oct 3, 2018)

Thanks for mentioning the point of floating buffers , and comparing it to a fully floating buffer solve to a 5 style solve.

Even with floating , 5 cycles will maintain ~20-35% more move efficiency over 3-style advanced.

I will be doing an exhaustive statistical comparison of full floating vs 5-cycle , on the move count , and update in the doc.


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## abunickabhi (Oct 3, 2018)

mark49152 said:


> I read your document quite quickly as I was short of time, but I didn't see any ideas on breaking down 5-style and making it more manageable. That's essential otherwise it just remains an unrealistic pipedream. The doc just seems to describe how hard it is and illustrate the theoretical benefits should anyone ever actually learn it, but that's not particularly helpful to learning it. Did I miss something?



If you give it a quick thought , it does seem like an unrealistic pipedream , and that is the reason why I procrastinated for nearly 3 years before starting out on learning 5-cycles.

The doc had more content about just plain comparison , as I just wanted to address all kinds of scepticism that people might have when they hear about 5 cycles for the first time.
I do have a learning mechanism to get the ~130000 edge algs and ~70000 corner algs , into our memory , and most of the algs into muscle memory , but for that learning to be effective enough for any level of blindfold solver, I will have to develop the learning method more.


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## abunickabhi (Oct 3, 2018)

Mike Hughey said:


> I've been under the impression that most of the top BLD solvers in the world now do in fact use floating buffers. I assumed that it was just true that enough practice made it possible to be totally reliable and good at that. But if there are top BLD solvers who don't use floating buffers, I'd love to know about it! Maybe it would be a useful thing to survey them.
> 
> I know I'm very slow, even with big cubes, so my opinions aren't worth much. But I'll offer my experience anyway: I used floating buffers for center pieces on big cubes BLD for many years. I liked the way that sometimes using floating buffers would give me the chance to cut a few commutators off my solve on a lucky scramble, compared to those who didn't use floating buffers, and I'm convinced I won a few competitions that way.  But a couple of years ago, when I came back to cubing after having taken a break for a couple of years, I decided it might be a good idea to try not using the floating buffers to see how it went. And I did find that I seemed to be faster and more reliable without them. Even though it was often true I would get to skip a commutator or two on a big cube (sometimes three or four or even more on 5BLD, and even more on really big cubes BLD), the memorization was a little trickier, and solving was also a little trickier. By always sticking with fixed buffers, everything became more braindead, and for me at my mediocre level, it really improved my speed and also my accuracy.
> 
> But I still think it's feasible that floating buffers might be a real benefit for people who are world-class at BLD. I am curious if it's true.



Floating buffers is really beneficial in improving the blindsolving technique , but it is really scramble dependent on how much , floating buffer cycles you are able to extract. Floating buffers is quite useful , in case of hard scrambles ,where all the pieces are stuck in a 2-cycle or a 4-cycle , and need to cycle breaks (an extra comm) to get solved.

Floating buffers is the way to go , but it is not the roof of the complexity we can develop for blindfold solving.
Eventually , we can start improving on 3-cycles and scale them up.


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## abunickabhi (Oct 3, 2018)

Underwatercuber said:


> not sure what you mean by the “to compare with 5style” part but there are a few places you can find walkthroughs/recons with floating. Off the top of my head I can think of some of Jake klassens walkthroughs, Josh Weimer has a vid, and then just going on Facebook in the bld support group lots of people can help you with stuff there



I do follow Jake cool walkthrough solves , and they are very helpful.
I am already a proponent of the 3-style , and the modern 3-style development.

It is just that I think the plunge into 5 cycles is worth considering , even if we have many advanced techniques for 3-style like parity avoidance, flipped edge+parity , parity +last comm , floating , CEEC/ECCE neutrality , ZBLL for parity , 2e2e and many more advanced techniques.


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## mark49152 (Oct 3, 2018)

abunickabhi said:


> I do have a learning mechanism to get the ~130000 edge algs and ~70000 corner algs , into our memory


At 10 algs per day that'll take you about 60 years, by which time your brain won't even recall your name and your fingers will have dropped off. Good luck!


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## lucarubik (Oct 3, 2018)

maybe a reduced 5 style, with a very efficent combination of way less algs would be interesting? maybe?


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## mark49152 (Oct 3, 2018)

lucarubik said:


> maybe a reduced 5 style, with a very efficent combination of way less algs would be interesting? maybe?


Sure. Anything would be interesting if it is novel, realistic, and makes a practical contribution to cubing knowledge.


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## h2f (Oct 3, 2018)

lucarubik said:


> but i don't think you can get used to the ambiguities of using two buffers, never as good as using one, not in a lifte time.



It looks like few blinders can.


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## lucarubik (Oct 3, 2018)

h2f said:


> It looks like few blinders can.


ill try it for myself, maybe its better in practice than it sounds in theory
i would have to learn cycles wtih all pieces as buffer but two, right? two of my choice, the two last would be 100% overlap
i guess ill test it for edges, since they are the most likely to be worth it on, by a lot, wich is a shame cause i already know all the 63x8 corner cases


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## mark49152 (Oct 3, 2018)

lucarubik said:


> i would have to learn cycles wtih all pieces as buffer but two, right?


Not necessarily. Simple floating is much easier. I gave an example above.


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 3, 2018)

A variant of total floating buffer that would only be minimally slower and would require no extra algorithm memorization would be to simply reorient the cube to put the new buffer where your current one normally is and then execute the appropriate algorithms for it there as you're using the new buffer. It probably depends on how you visualize the pieces as to how difficult it might be to see where the other pieces wind up when you do this. I think it would confuse me, but I get the feeling other people don't find it that difficult.


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## lucarubik (Oct 3, 2018)

mark49152 said:


> Not necessarily. Simple floating is much easier. I gave an example above.


even if that set ups end up cancelling and its literally te same, i rather think about it as completely different buffer


Mike Hughey said:


> A variant of total floating buffer that would only be minimally slower and would require no extra algorithm memorization would be to simply reorient the cube to put the new buffer where your current one normally is and then execute the appropriate algorithms for it there as you're using the new buffer. It probably depends on how you visualize the pieces as to how difficult it might be to see where the other pieces wind up when you do this. I think it would confuse me, but I get the feeling other people don't find it that difficult.


 yes i didnt even think abouit it, there is a lot of overlap, a lot of symetry, i dont think i need to do any of that, just actual floating buffer


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## h2f (Oct 3, 2018)

lucarubik said:


> even if that set ups end up cancelling and its literally te same, i rather think about it as completely different buffer



I'm not an expert in this but yes - it needs learning algs for few buffers. But few of top blinders changed they buffer from DF to UF and UBL to UFR so it makes it easier.


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## lucarubik (Oct 3, 2018)

h2f said:


> I'm not an expert in this but yes - it needs learning algs for few buffers. But few of top blinders changed they buffer from DF to UF and UBL to UFR so it makes it easier.


tell me about it lol


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## abunickabhi (Oct 5, 2018)

mark49152 said:


> At 10 algs per day that'll take you about 60 years, by which time your brain won't even recall your name and your fingers will have dropped off. Good luck!



I do not think extrapolating linearly works while learning algorithms. Otherwise it is just insane amount of linear time.
We always have computer and computing power at our disposal , and our brain increases its complexity with each passing day , maybe exponentially for some people.

60 years sounds too pessimistic.

If I assume a fully driven person , it should take him/her , 4 years to get complete 5 cycle into their mind and fingers.
If the person is just doing blindfold solving as a hobby , maybe around 10 years to completely exhaust the set and drill
If the person is just doing speedcubing as a hobby , then your calculations match up , ie , 10-60 years , and lot of best wishes for that crazy person.


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## mark49152 (Oct 5, 2018)

abunickabhi said:


> 60 years sounds too pessimistic.
> 
> If I assume a fully driven person , it should take him/her , 4 years to get complete 5 cycle into their mind and fingers.
> If the person is just doing blindfold solving as a hobby , maybe around 10 years to completely exhaust the set and drill
> If the person is just doing speedcubing as a hobby , then your calculations match up , ie , 10-60 years , and lot of best wishes for that crazy person.


4 years = 1461 days. Let's say 12 hours per day. 200,000 algs comes out at roughly one new alg every 5 minutes. You did say "driven" so I've assumed no breaks and no other life.

Of course learning isn't linear, but an average rate is still a reasonable way to show how crazy it is. Maybe you'll learn algs faster as you go, but you'll also have to spend more time reviewing what you already learned.

I won't waste time on the 10 year scenario as it's not much better. I think maybe you don't grasp the numbers and the scale of the task. You're welcome to prove me wrong though and I look forward to seeing you back here in 4 years!


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## abunickabhi (Oct 5, 2018)

mark49152 said:


> 4 years = 1461 days. Let's say 12 hours per day. 200,000 algs comes out at roughly one new alg every 5 minutes. You did say "driven" so I've assumed no breaks and no other life.
> 
> Of course learning isn't linear, but an average rate is still a reasonable way to show how crazy it is. Maybe you'll learn algs faster as you go, but you'll also have to spend more time reviewing what you already learned.
> 
> I won't waste time on the 10 year scenario as it's not much better. I think maybe you don't grasp the numbers and the scale of the task. You're welcome to prove me wrong though and I look forward to seeing you back here in 4 years!



Hmmm , this 10 algs a day batch approach never works, 

if suppose there are 20 types of commutators in 5 cycle on contrary to 5 in 3 cycle (pure comm, A9 , cycle shift , columns , per special) , then just understand the alg and its various setup would be crucial . The task would be to accurately retrieve the each alg , and the type of comm+setup we have mapped it into.

I do not expect everyone to start learning this up, this is still in its baby phase, maybe in few years I can make it modular enough for every calibre person ,to grasp appropriate parts of the whole system of 5cycle.


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## mark49152 (Oct 5, 2018)

abunickabhi said:


> this is still in its baby phase


That's exactly the problem. Maybe you simply posted it too early. You've claimed that full 5-style is viable and that you have a "learning mechanism" that will enable you to master it, but you have not told us what that mechanism is or how you have validated it. You just keep repeating that learning full 5-style is possible, and expecting us to take that at face value. Well, my belief today is that it's not humanly possible to learn 200,000 algs in 4 years, and only a very good explanation will change my belief. The problem is one of quantity, but you are not addressing that. Instead, you are making vague qualitative statements about comm types and setups, etc. Unless you can provide a quantitative explanation of how you have broken down 5-style into some manageable system and amount of work, your claim lacks credibility.

(Besides which, there's the important question of whether it would be worth the effort and faster than 3-style. Even if you could learn it all, you would have worse algs with worse recall and less practice.)


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## kubnintadni (Oct 8, 2018)

Would it be possible to reduce all Corner 5-cycles (or edge 5-cycles, for that matter) down to various groups of cases which are essentially the same, just flipped, mirrored, inverted, conjugated, etc., and intuitively reduce to and then solve those cases instead of memorizing the algs? If the number of such groups of essentially identical cases was less than or equal to the number of cases in ZBLL, then it would absolutely be something which should be tried. (I'm not the one to ask whether or not it would be better, but no doubt it would deserve to be seriously tried by someone at the very least)

Like intuitive 3-style but with 5-cycles?

Also, are there any resources on floating buffers? I saw it mentioned on this thread as a more realistic alternative to 5-style. How many moves are saved by using floating buffers?


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## mark49152 (Oct 8, 2018)

kubnintadni said:


> Would it be possible to reduce all Corner 5-cycles (or edge 5-cycles, for that matter) down to various groups of cases which are essentially the same, just flipped, mirrored, inverted, conjugated, etc., and intuitively reduce to and then solve those cases instead of memorizing the algs?


Yeah it's possible, but it remains a problem of quantity. How many cases are there? I don't know, but if someone wishes to claim it's a viable approach to learning full 5-style, that's where they should start .


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## PapaSmurf (Oct 8, 2018)

2 ideas to help reduce the number of cases: do 4-style, and the M slice is off by an M2 and the corners have an edge swap in there somewhere, or do 5-style eka. So set up to UF or LDF and do one of a massively reduced set of algs.


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## mark49152 (Oct 8, 2018)

Some other nice ideas include finding ways to work 4-6 move 5-cycles into 3-style solves.

For example M' U M U' can be set up or mirrored to solve the DF-FU-UB case on the M slice followed by any inner and outer edge on opposite sides. It's short and fast and setting up the other two pieces on opposite faces makes it quite easy to use.
Plus it could be useful in just under a quarter of occurrences of DF-FU-UB-xx-yy with no cycle breaks, so occurs frequently enough to get practised.

Or, you can think ahead into 5-cycles to solve pieces out of order, using shorter, faster algs for different buffers. Someone else posted on FB about this recently. If the next 4 targets are ABCD the usual 3-style way is to solve AB then CD, but you could solve it other ways like BCD then AB where BCD is a fast 4 or 5 mover with B as buffer. 

I'm not fast enough to seriously consider using this stuff myself, but I'm sure the top blinders already dabble with it. Of course it's a long way short of the full 5-style that @abunickabhi is advocating, but sometimes the best place to start is with whatever low hanging fruit offers the better return on time invested.


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## jesinspirment (Dec 14, 2018)

Hi all,

I have previously used Boomerang/M2 for blindfold solves, and now I am learning BH, starting with corners.

What I'm currently doing, is get all the 378 corner cycles from here: http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/bhcorners.html

From there, I simply apply the reverse algorithm to all cases in order to set up the respective cycles, but I figure out a commutator myself for all cases, as I feel that it helps in my understanding of the cube and that it will be easier to "remember" since I came out with the list. For every commutator I figure out, the reverse of that becomes a solution for another cycle.

However, the issue here is I have too many cube rotations in my commutators, which I'm not sure if it's ok. Here is an example:



Are such cube rotations ok? Or should I just get used to doing insertions from other angles? Will appreciate help from all of you who are more experienced.


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## mark49152 (Dec 14, 2018)

jesinspirment said:


> Are such cube rotations ok? Or should I just get used to doing insertions from other angles? Will appreciate help from all of you who are more experienced.


If you want to get fast, rotations are best minimised. The top solvers today generally favour additional setup moves so that they can avoid rotations, avoid regrips, and keep in the <R,U,D> moveset as far as possible. It's not unusual for 3style algs to use 3 or 4 setup moves to an 8 move comm, for the sake of ergonomics, even if it could be solved in fewer moves with worse ergonomics.

I'd recommend checking out some modern alg lists to get some ideas on what works well. Graham's list is good: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...em3XJ5tBm7Dk1dTRcZ7KcXYbGP4/edit?usp=drivesdk


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## jesinspirment (Dec 14, 2018)

mark49152 said:


> If you want to get fast, rotations are best minimised. The top solvers today generally favour additional setup moves so that they can avoid rotations, avoid regrips, and keep in the <R,U,D> moveset as far as possible. It's not unusual for 3style algs to use 3 or 4 setup moves to an 8 move comm, for the sake of ergonomics, even if it could be solved in fewer moves with worse ergonomics.
> 
> I'd recommend checking out some modern alg lists to get some ideas on what works well. Graham's list is good: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...em3XJ5tBm7Dk1dTRcZ7KcXYbGP4/edit?usp=drivesdk



I re-looked at some of my commutators that have double rotations like x' y etc. I happen to think of an easy way to make it rotationless, but not sure if I'm on the right track. That is, I make a conscious decision to standardise my interchange move to U, U' or U2 (my buffer is UFR). In other words, even for cycles that can be solved in 8 moves, I avoid rotation by intentionally introducing 1 setup move to create a U layer interchange move, apply the commutator, reverse setup.

For instance, supposedly we have this: UFR LFU BDL

The optimal solution I figured out (8 moves) is: x' y' [D', R U' R']

To avoid the rotation, I figured that I can do this by forcing a U layer interchange like this: [L: U2, R' D R]

Another example: UFR URB LUB

Optimal: x' [R' D' R, U']
Rotationless: [L2: R' D R, U] or [R: U, R D R']


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## TheGrayCuber (Dec 15, 2018)

jesinspirment said:


> For instance, supposedly we have this: UFR LFU BDL
> 
> The optimal solution I figured out (8 moves) is: x' y' [D', R U' R']
> 
> ...



For the first example, you can do [Lw: U2, R’ D R] instead to cancel an R Move and an Lw, and do a rotation instead.

For the second example the L2 setup seems far worse than the R setup.


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## leeo (Dec 23, 2018)

My program is finally built to the point where I can easily verify any list or spreadsheet of BH corners or edges. For example, from the wiki http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/bhcorners.html. I reformatted and rearranged the list into a spreadsheet employing the common Speffz letter system and sorted it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NOeLuw74d10lyMy9uWE6mFpPaKzSyBFiS-KXUvwfgn4/edit?usp=sharing
Where a target is on the same moving piece as the buffer or secondary, it is noted in the spreadsheet with the speffz letters attached to the same cubie, i.e. <AER>, <EAER> or <RAER>. I was able to verify the the corners list is 100% correct! 

For the edges, from http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/bhedges.html, I also reformatted, but did not trim the extra entries -- however I did add a handful of missing entries. This was evident from following the letter system. I also reformatted the result and arranged into a spreadsheet employing the common Speffz letter system and sorted it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=18s6vbyALkVc3VMKiidhz8wpjFr4b5z7z
Where a target is on the same moving piece as the buffer or secondary, it is noted in the spreadsheet with the speffz letters attached to the same cubie, i.e. <AQ> or <QA>.

For a link to the source code at this point, see my speedsolving.com post http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/threads/creeping-featurism-in-my-program.71692/ or the bit-bucket git push at https://bitbucket.org/leeo3264/cubetrae/src/master/


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## abunickabhi (Mar 11, 2019)

leeo said:


> My program is finally built to the point where I can easily verify any list or spreadsheet of BH corners or edges. For example, from the wiki http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/bhcorners.html. I reformatted and rearranged the list into a spreadsheet employing the common Speffz letter system and sorted it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NOeLuw74d10lyMy9uWE6mFpPaKzSyBFiS-KXUvwfgn4/edit?usp=sharing
> Where a target is on the same moving piece as the buffer or secondary, it is noted in the spreadsheet with the speffz letters attached to the same cubie, i.e. <AER>, <EAER> or <RAER>. I was able to verify the the corners list is 100% correct!
> 
> For the edges, from http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/bhedges.html, I also reformatted, but did not trim the extra entries -- however I did add a handful of missing entries. This was evident from following the letter system. I also reformatted the result and arranged into a spreadsheet employing the common Speffz letter system and sorted it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=18s6vbyALkVc3VMKiidhz8wpjFr4b5z7z
> ...



What is going to be the primary use of this application. Will it be for verifying algsheets of different people with different lettering schemes?


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## abunickabhi (Mar 11, 2019)

lucarubik said:


> maybe a reduced 5 style, with a very efficent combination of way less algs would be interesting? maybe?



Exactly my point,
and to accelerate the learning rate, I have developed the Yo notation to memorize the algorithms.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bfDsydw6pxBftd8Xwik95FNjILGkdrJMBO5EORbftII/edit?usp=sharing

I will be also documenting my progress on the fingertricks that I get for each case like in this video: 



Since I am just starting out drilling, not all algs are sub-1ed by me, but I think they can be sub 1.5ed since most of the algs are no more than 14 moves.

Right now, I am 8000 algs down, and I need to memorize ~118000 algs more.
https://github.com/abunickabhi/5-style/blob/master/5-style-edge.pdf

With the Giiker cube coming out last year, I can drill even more algorithms faster and randomly, and save time.





So, by my goal setting, by the end of 2020, I should have sub-1.5ed every 5-style edge alg and open sourced the fingertricks on my YT channel yo.

Mark Rivers, I hope these arguments have made you a bit less skeptic about this method.


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## mark49152 (Mar 11, 2019)

abunickabhi said:


> I need to memorize ~118000 algs more
> ...
> So, by my goal setting, by the end of 2020, I should have sub-1.5ed every 5-style edge alg
> ...
> Mark Rivers, I hope these arguments have made you a bit less skeptic about this method.


If you're claiming you're going to learn 118,000 new algs by the end of next year, AND drill them all to sub-1.5, then no, I'm still sceptical. Sorry.


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## PapaSmurf (Mar 11, 2019)

In his defence, he did say that he'll have executed them sub 1.5, not learnt. I know of a dude who has sub 2ed every 1lll alg. He hasn't learnt them. But I am skeptical that without an intuitive way to do 5 cycles this method will be nigh on impossible.


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## mark49152 (Mar 11, 2019)

PapaSmurf said:


> In his defence, he did say that he'll have executed them sub 1.5, not learnt. I know of a dude who has sub 2ed every 1lll alg. He hasn't learnt them. But I am skeptical that without an intuitive way to do 5 cycles this method will be nigh on impossible.


He said "I need to memorize ~118000 algs more". Perhaps he did mean he would drill them by end of 2020 then move on to memorizing them afterward, but either way, there are 660 days until end of 2020. That's 179 algs/day, every day.


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## Underwatercuber (Mar 11, 2019)

mark49152 said:


> He said "I need to memorize ~118000 algs more". Perhaps he did mean he would drill them by end of 2020 then move on to memorizing them afterward, but either way, there are 660 days until end of 2020. That's 179 algs/day, every day.


bUt RoMaN rOoMs

Also I doubt they could be 1.5, I looked at his 5style sheet a while back and there were several 5+gen algs that were super bad lol


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## Underwatercuber (Mar 11, 2019)

also would it be at all possible to "lock" this thread and replace it with a 3style thread? I would hate to see people actually picking up BH over 3style because they think its relevant, most of the time when people ask about BH the first thing done is to just tell them about 3style  maybe someone can just link a 3style thread as the final comment before closing this thread to help people out too


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## abunickabhi (Mar 12, 2019)

Underwatercuber said:


> bUt RoMaN rOoMs
> 
> Also, I doubt they could be 1.5, I looked at his 5style sheet a while back and there were several 5+gen algs that were super bad lol




I have replaced those algs, now all the algs are rotation-less and without B moves. 
(It is tough to make 5 cycle edge algs 2gen or 3-gen with Slice moves. 4-gen + slice moves and optimal move count is the sweet spot that I have found. 

https://github.com/abunickabhi/5-style (Check out the newer algs here, they all are good, except for the corner algs.)

There is almost two regrips in each alg, and it can be reduced to one maybe after investing more time into fingertricking it.

And yes, I have prepped 75 new roman rooms just for memorizing the algorithms.
I will be storing the Yo notation images of each algorithm at a locus in the mind palace.
https://www.memorypalace.com/palace/2129/mbld

Fingers crossed!


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## dbeyer (Mar 15, 2019)

Eh, well the point this entire method was to implement Commutators across the entire spectrum of 3x3x3 to 5x5x5. The point of BH is that there are 8 move Commutators in ABA'B' format. Then you expand upon that to recognize cancellations for A9s. Followed by cycles that are 10 move optimal. There is a special Cyclic shift 10 mover. Then your column cases for 11 moves. Finally 12 move cases.

Due to the symmetry of the cases, you can adjust your moves to find your intuitive finger friendly cases.

It was never meant to be a comprehensive list of algorithms. Moreso an overview of an understanding of Commutators to solve the cube.

Low move counts and efficiency lends to speed. But that same concept was meant to expand to x-centers, t-centers, wings, edges, corners, and even further big cube expansions.

It is not about memorizing thousands of cases. Rather you efficiently and accurately solve a case based on the relative positional relationships between the cubies you are solving sequentially.

That time could be better spent developing finger tricks and understanding of cancellations between cycles. Also actually practicing blind solves and sighted solutions with cycles.

Anyway just my take on it.


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## tx789 (Mar 15, 2019)

dbeyer said:


> Eh, well the point this entire method was to implement Commutators across the entire spectrum of 3x3x3 to 5x5x5. The point of BH is that there are 8 move Commutators in ABA'B' format. Then you expand upon that to recognize cancellations for A9s. Followed by cycles that are 10 move optimal. There is a special Cyclic shift 10 mover. Then your column cases for 11 moves. Finally 12 move cases.
> .



Speed optimal comm are used today. [R F' R' U':[R D R',U2]] is an example of a 4 move set up and [U R' F R,D' R D R'] is a strange comm I don't understand. You can find list of these speed optimal comms in spreadsheets bestsiteever.ru has a list of links to them. Those are from Daniel Lin's list. Learning from these lists is fine if you understand comms for all of 3-style. Doing it completely intuitively leads to slow comms.

I feel like move optimal was focused on back when this was first published. Not sure people discussed buffers much either back then UFR/UF are considered best now.


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## abunickabhi (Mar 15, 2019)

tx789 said:


> ple of a 4 move set up and [U R' F R,D' R D R'] is a strange comm I don't understand. You can find list of these speed optimal comms in spreadsheets bestsiteever.ru has a list of links to them. Those are from Daniel Lin's list. Learning from these lists is fine if you understand comms for all of 3-style. Doing it completely intuitively leads to slow comms.
> 
> I feel like move optimal was focused on back when this was first published. Not



Back then there was no background to work on. So, mostly the methods that will develop would have been somewhat incorrrect or correct outright. We have settled down to UF/UFR after some iterations of thoughts and pro-cubers discussion.

The reason [R F' R' U':[R D R',U2]]  comm is better than the move optimal comm. is the same reason CFOP is better than any other move optimal method like Waterman and Roux. It just that regrips is a big thing when it comes to accelerating up the execution of the solve.


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## abunickabhi (Mar 15, 2019)

dbeyer said:


> Eh, well the point this entire method was to implement Commutators across the entire spectrum of 3x3x3 to 5x5x5. The point of BH is that there are 8 move Commutators in ABA'B' format. Then you expand upon that to recognize cancellations for A9s. Followed by cycles that are 10 move optimal. There is a special Cyclic shift 10 mover. Then your column cases for 11 moves. Finally 12 move cases.
> 
> Due to the symmetry of the cases, you can adjust your moves to find your intuitive finger friendly cases.
> 
> ...




I agree my thousands of cases system violates the principle of BH which was to identify the root commutator types and scale it up to bigger cubes. 
But due to the advent of tons of improvements people are putting up on improving a 3BLD solve like introducing advanced parity algorithms, 2e2e, floating buffers, weak swap and so on, 5style is just an attempt to bulldoze it up and make a comprehensive system that can shuffle 5 pieces at once. 

It is just my take on it. Sorry if I sounded too opinionated.


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## PapaSmurf (Mar 15, 2019)

abunickabhi said:


> Back then there was no background to work on. So, mostly the methods that will develop would have been somewhat incorrrect or correct outright. We have settled down to UF/UFR after some iterations of thoughts and pro-cubers discussion.
> 
> The reason [R F' R' U':[R D R',U2]] comm is better than the move optimal comm. is the same reason CFOP is better than any other move optimal method like Waterman and Roux. It just that regrips is a big thing when it comes to accelerating up the execution of the solve.


The first bit I agree with. The proposed method will always be slightly worse or terrible compared to the finished method. And people are still optimising 3-style, with floating, more parity and 2e2e. 
The second but I do not agree with. It's like we have better algorithms than 10 years ago, but have you seen Kian mansour? He's basically sub 6 without a stackmat and roux. In fact, I am convinced that roux is better than CFOP for the reason that it's about 10 moves more efficient.


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## mark49152 (Mar 15, 2019)

dbeyer said:


> It is not about memorizing thousands of cases.


I personally view modern 3style as an evolution of BH. The principles are very similar, except speed optimality (factoring in ergonomics) has been prioritised over move optimality. The method of learning is not much different. Learning 3style is about recognising patterns and understanding them, not brute force memorization of algs.

(I can't vouch for the 5cycles work posted here by @abunickabhi though - I haven't thoroughly studied his alg list to see how suited they are to intuitive learning, but my guess is that 5cycles won't have the same simple patterns as 3cycles, and the few cases I have looked at do support that view.)


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## dbeyer (Mar 15, 2019)

It is an evolution of the method. But it is really the same thing. You can see those same solutions with an understanding Commutators.


mark49152 said:


> I personally view modern 3style as an evolution of BH. The principles are very similar, except speed optimality (factoring in ergonomics) has been prioritised over move optimality. The method of learning is not much different. Learning 3style is about recognising patterns and understanding them, not brute force memorization of algs.
> 
> (I can't vouch for the 5cycles work posted here by @abunickabhi though - I haven't thoroughly studied his alg list to see how suited they are to intuitive learning, but my guess is that 5cycles won't have the same simple patterns as 3cycles, and the few cases I have looked at do support that view.)



It is an evolution. However to be clear it is the same thing. Accurate, fast, efficient solutions.

You can so multiple solutions for each case. You can do a 9 mover for an 8 move solution. If that 9 mover is faster, by all means.

Once again though, the method of BH was designed for big cubes, and it was applicable to 3x3x3 as well.

Designed at a time 10 years ago when cubes still popped, and Mefferts and Olympicubes were the big cube options.

You recognize positional relationships and solve them accurately. Simple enough.


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## tx789 (Mar 15, 2019)

abunickabhi said:


> Back then there was no background to work on. So, mostly the methods that will develop would have been somewhat incorrrect or correct outright. We have settled down to UF/UFR after some iterations of thoughts and pro-cubers discussion.
> 
> The reason [R F' R' U':[R D R',U2]] comm is better than the move optimal comm. is the same reason CFOP is better than any other move optimal method like Waterman and Roux. It just that regrips is a big thing when it comes to accelerating up the execution of the solve.


Yeah there have been a lot of developments over the last 10 years, But 3 style mostly set ups to 8 movers rather than solving move optimally. Do that 10 years ago might of looked different but could be done. 


dbeyer said:


> It is an evolution of the method. But it is really the same thing. You can see those same solutions with an understanding Commutators.
> 
> It is an evolution. However to be clear it is the same thing. Accurate, fast, efficient solutions.
> 
> ...


Hardware changes are a significant factor. 3 style is fine for big cubes now. f slice is very usable. Look at the 5x5 world record. It wasn't even sub 1 on v-cubes. Now it is low 40s for average. Those not many people are really trying to find the most optimal comms in the way 3BLD has since bigBLD is not very popular.


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## mark49152 (Mar 15, 2019)

tx789 said:


> Those not many people are really trying to find the most optimal comms in the way 3BLD has since bigBLD is not very popular.


True, but big BLD has made advances too. Compare modern comm lists to say Ollie Frost's from the time of his WRs. Many of Ollie's algs were low move count but involved rotations. As with 3BLD, today we see stronger preference for specific move groups with fewer rotations, at the price of less move efficiency.


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## schapel (Mar 15, 2019)

mark49152 said:


> True, but big BLD has made advances too. Compare modern comm lists to say Ollie Frost's from the time of his WRs. Many of Ollie's algs were low move count but involved rotations. As with 3BLD, today we see stronger preference for specific move groups with fewer rotations, at the price of less move efficiency.


we're still far closer to move optimal comms than I'd like to think 
when I commit to learning floating wings I'll optimize


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