# Starting BLD solving



## Theromy (Sep 24, 2007)

I want to start blind solving, I searched it on YouTube and a set of Tutorials came up by Seerus god, here's the link to the first tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTxY-GrivnY

I can get Corner orientation and permutation (I just need to practice them so I can memorise it all at once and then do it)
Then Edge orientation and permutation throws me, I tried PJKs website to learn that Mcgaugh method but it's I'm still lost.

Do you know any easier way to describe them or a different method?

Theromy.


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## Theromy (Sep 24, 2007)

Also with that method on the tutorial, I could get the Edges, probably, but then I need to label everysingle Edge piece sticker from A-X and that is a task to remember. 

The method is Corner orient, then Corner permute. Then it's Edge orient and permute in the same step.


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## joey (Sep 24, 2007)

I would suggest looking into:
M2 : http://stefan-pochmann.info/spocc/blindsolving/M2R2/
Pochmann : http://stefan-pochmann.info/spocc/blindsolving/3x3/
3 - cycle : http://www.cubefreak.net

To give you help on solving the edges.


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## Theromy (Sep 24, 2007)

Thanks, I think they are the same method as I've already almost learnt. I think instead of orienting and permuting edges at the same time I'll orient and then permute, or the other way around.


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## Theromy (Sep 24, 2007)

I kept looking back at PJKs page and I've finally done it, the only thing I do differently is the corner orientation, partially because I already knew how to do that from what I'd learnt from those videos before.


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## doubleyou (Sep 25, 2007)

I started getting interested in BLD too. but I find even the best guides to be really hard to follow. I havent really watched any tutorials on youtube yet. is thatone good?

Could you explain me how you think of what you can do now, Theromy? like beginner-to-beginner


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## joey (Sep 25, 2007)

I don't think that the video is that good, it is explained by someone who I think is also a begginer.


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## Theromy (Sep 25, 2007)

It's pretty hard to explain, that's why most websites are hard to understand, the basic idea is a cycle, you move pieces such as corner pieces into a slot known as a buffer zone (or that's the name I know for it) You can move that piece up there using only certain movements such as D, L2, F2. When it's in the buffer zone you do an algorithm (T-Perm) then move it back to its position, the piece that was left behind from the buffer zone is then placed in the next slot (You find the next slot and move it up there then do the T-Perm and move it back now Etc.) It's just like a cycle, moving pieces in and out of areas.

I have a question for PJK or anyone else, when it comes to edge permutation, and I need to get, say Edge 6 into the buffer zone where the T-Perm swaps the piece, do I always have to do the same setup movements? So in that case it would be d' L'. Or sometimes would it be different? I think I know it right, and I think that when you orient the edges it always makes the same setup movement to get that piece into the buffer zone. Just checking though


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## Theromy (Sep 25, 2007)

Here's a table I made on Excel earlier to keep track of my Blindfolding. I write the scramble, then go through it step by step and note down the moves, then I'll redo it maybe 2 or 3 times. I've named the Edges A B C ... etc so that I don't get mixed up with Corners, also it's easier because you can make words like if it goes " A B E D I H J" I could memorise it as the pronunciation " abedy hej", just seems to make it easier


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## doubleyou (Sep 26, 2007)

the problem seems to be that the sides tells how methods work, but they dont actually teach you it. ie. I recommend you work on these and these exersices before moving on etc etc.

It would be nice if someone really took the time and made a real tutorial for beginners. 

maybe it wont be as rewarding when you learn it, but at least you dont start practice wrong things etc.

Theromy, it seems like you have a pretty good idea of what BLD is all about. good job!  I cant wait to succesfully solve the first bld on my own.

I once memorized a scramble. and one day I sat down, closed my eyes, scrambled the cube and solved it, opened my eyes to find it succesfully solved. what a wonderful feeling. havent done it since


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## AvGalen (Sep 26, 2007)

> It would be nice if someone really took the time and made a real tutorial for beginners


 It was made, and will be online in about a month after I get broadband and redo some parts.


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## doubleyou (Sep 26, 2007)

oh really? you are so cool Arnaud!! thanks!! I'll be waiting


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## Theromy (Sep 26, 2007)

I can BLD solve but i'm so slow, but I guess it comes with practice. My memorisation is quite slow and my execution doesn't always go smoothly, I might mess up a setup movement or something.

With normal solving I feel behind now, since I've been doing it almost 2 months and I'm not getting sub 30 much, (Usually 35 seconds now but the other day I got 2 or 3 high 20s and they weren't lucky) everyso often I'll get a lucky solve though. On Harris Chans video he said he got sub 20 in I think it was 3 months but I doubt I'll get that :/


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## masterofthebass (Sep 26, 2007)

Remember... he is Harris Chan. He has a natural ability to be ridiculously fast. And for BLD, it just takes practice. My memo just got faster as I paracticed more and was able to store things in my memory quicker. My fastest memo of the cube was about 45 seconds, and my best BLD is 2:04. With Pochmann's Old method.


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## doubleyou (Sep 29, 2007)

thats incredible! 2:04 is better I think than Pochmann himself XD

Theromy, dont compare youself to Harris Chan! he is in his own leage along with only VERY few

sub30 times in only 2 months? thats too fast too! you must have incredible unerstanding and ease with finger tricks. keep practicing, you'll get faster when you dont stress for a while


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## Theromy (Sep 30, 2007)

Those 22-25 second solves were luck (easy f2l, but no oll or pll skip)
Thought today I've got 3 or 4 26-30 seconds which weren't lucky.


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## doubleyou (Sep 30, 2007)

Luck is only when you skip a whole step. like OLL or PLL. easy F2L pairs dont count as luck.
you will find that with practice ALL f2l is easy, then it doesnt matter much wich case you get

I figured tho, that if I force myself to solve the X-cross, then the rest of F2L feels much easier. usually.

EDIT: sorry to jump off topic (off forum )


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## choipster (Oct 27, 2007)

i just retried learning to blindsolve and i found the same video. how effective do you guys think this would be? i found a written tutorial that uses the same method at http://home.earthlink.net/~bmcgaugh/

think i would be able to get under 3-4 minutes with this? i tried to learn macky's 3-cycle method about 6 months ago and it confused the hell out of me. looking at it again, i still get really confused at parts. also, it seems like an awful lot of algorithms.


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## hait2 (Oct 27, 2007)

choipster said:


> i just retried learning to blindsolve and i found the same video. how effective do you guys think this would be? i found a written tutorial that uses the same method at http://home.earthlink.net/~bmcgaugh/
> 
> think i would be able to get under 3-4 minutes with this? i tried to learn macky's 3-cycle method about 6 months ago and it confused the hell out of me. looking at it again, i still get really confused at parts. also, it seems like an awful lot of algorithms.



you don't need all those algs for the 3cycle
the only algs you _need_ to know are the edge orienter, corner orienter, Uperm and Aperm

two of them you should already know, and the third one isn't really an alg, just a 4move sequence

if you have questions about any of the 4 steps in 3cycle feel free to ask =)


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## TimC (Oct 28, 2007)

If you want an easy to get method, learned the one on PJK's site.
http://pjkcubed.com/blindfold-guide.html
I thought it was the easiest to understand, now i just need to practice.
I've only successfully finished 3 times...


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## choipster (Oct 29, 2007)

Hey, thanks for the help. going back through Macky's guide a couple times, I feel like i have a pretty good understanding of it.

i got a few questions though:

1) are there any restrictions regarding set up moves for orientation of corners and edges?
2) does it matter whether you do corner orientation or edge orientation first? i only ask because edge orientation is addressed first in his guide but is solved second in his example solves. 
3) even though its a lot less algos than i expected, it still seems to be a few more than the 4 you mentioned. corner permutation for cycles of length 2 seems to involve 3 different algs by itself, and the notation there kinda throws me.
4) I dont fully understand parity. in the permutation parity section, two examples of parities are shown. how are you supposed to know which case you have? Also, the second example shown is solved through an H Perm, but the H Perm is also shown as a solution to a permutation cycle of length 2. why then is it considered a parity at all? shouldn't it just be a permutation cycle of length 2? 

thanks for any help you can offer. 

also, i checked out pjk's guide and found it pretty easy to understand. it seems the same method as the other site i checked out and the youtube video. i think i'll stick with the 3-cycle though cause it seems faster and i've spent the past couple days looking at it. thanks for the rec though. i'll be sure to check it out if 3-cycle proves too difficult.


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## hait2 (Oct 29, 2007)

choipster said:


> Hey, thanks for the help. going back through Macky's guide a couple times, I feel like i have a pretty good understanding of it.
> 
> i got a few questions though:
> 
> 1) are there any restrictions regarding set up moves for orientation of corners and edges?


no, there are no restrictions for orientation.

try to figure out why this is if you like, it's fairly simple (take a case where orientation isn't changed with setup moves, see what happens. then take a case where the setup moves DO change orientation, and see what happens)



choipster said:


> 2) does it matter whether you do corner orientation or edge orientation first? i only ask because edge orientation is addressed first in his guide but is solved second in his example solves.


doesn't matter. solving orientation doesn't affect any pieces at all except the ones you're solving. you could even do them both at once, although that's more trouble than it's worth.



choipster said:


> 3) even though its a lot less algos than i expected, it still seems to be a few more than the 4 you mentioned. corner permutation for cycles of length 2 seems to involve 3 different algs by itself, and the notation there kinda throws me.


well, i mean to be efficient sure, more is nice. but to solve cycles of length 2, you can do just fine with an Aperm. Say you have a corner cycle (12)(34). I mean you could apply (123). What do you have now? (143) (try to figure out why this is. do an Eperm on a cube, then apply an Aperm & see what happens) which you can solve by doing 3cycle again

which part of notation confuses you?


choipster said:


> 4) I dont fully understand parity. in the permutation parity section, two examples of parities are shown. how are you supposed to know which case you have? Also, the second example shown is solved through an H Perm, but the H Perm is also shown as a solution to a permutation cycle of length 2. why then is it considered a parity at all? shouldn't it just be a permutation cycle of length 2?
> 
> thanks for any help you can offer.



there's basically 3 types of parity. corner parity, edge parity, and corner-edge parity. All a parity means is a 2cycle. If you have a 2cycle, you have a parity.

So, if you have two 2cycles of corners, that's a corner parity. Two 2cycles of edges is an edge parity. A corner 2cycle and an edge 2cycle is a corner-edge (go figure) parity.

You know you have one because as you reduce down your cycles via solving, you end up with a 2cycle. If you solve all edges and wound up with a 2cycle, you're going to have a 2cycle of corners which you will solve later.

And yes, I admit I forgot about this. Add a 5th alg for parity solving. Something like Tperm (cycles edges and corners at once) would do.

Hopefully my answers didn't confuse you ^-^


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## choipster (Oct 30, 2007)

thanks a lot for the help man. i really appreciate it. and your answers were great, didnt confuse me at all. 

for the notation, im not sure what the x and w mean. but its ok because i realized i know how to do that alg already, just didnt notice it before. 
also, i just plain didnt understand what i was seeing. i later realized that cp = corner permutation and ep= edge permutation, so just bonehead stuff on my part.


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## badmephisto (Oct 30, 2007)

i tried getting into the M2R2 method for past two days, but i find it to be quite complicated - i understood Stefan's first method without any problems, and I thought it was very well explained, but I can't seem to get grasp on the M2R2 method... 
It's not exactly clear what we can or can't change in the setup moves...
also, sometimes it seems like you are intentionally shooting an edge to its location but flipped? or shooting a corner to a wrong location on purpose, just to fix it all up at the very end with an algorithm. Is that even right? I'm not even sure... I don't think that some parts are very well explained, but the method itself is very good looking and it obviously really powerful... i just wish there was a little more


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## masterofthebass (Oct 30, 2007)

There are some other threads on M2, but here it goes again. If you're moving from Pochmann's old method, then M2 is relatively easy to understand. Instead of doing you're T-perm to switch UL-UR you use M2 so switch FD-BU. Instead of switching corners back and forth, you're switching the centers and other M slice edges. There isn't really any freedom in the set-up moves, which is why Stefan wrote down every set-up. Stefan's idea for the middle edges is that you put the edge in it's correct position with an easy algorithm and then flip it later, versus using a long algorithm to put it in it's correct orientation. I haven't really delved into R2 much, but it's the same idea. If you don't use R2, and stick with old Pochmann's corner method, then for parity use U' F2 U M2 U' F2 U. It fixes the centers and switches UB-UL, like the Y-perm.


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## Joël (Oct 30, 2007)

Hi,

I also have a BLD tutorial over here:

http://www.solvethecube.110mb.com/?location=blindfold

Quite a bit of reading, but it describes different kinds of methods and describes how to do orientation & permutation in one go (if this *sounds* hard don't be discouraged, it's not harder than other bld methods) in detail. Even even when you are not interested in learing the same method, I think it could be interesting for you.

- Joël.


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## hait2 (Oct 30, 2007)

choipster said:


> thanks a lot for the help man. i really appreciate it. and your answers were great, didnt confuse me at all.
> 
> for the notation, im not sure what the x and w mean. but its ok because i realized i know how to do that alg already, just didnt notice it before.
> also, i just plain didnt understand what i was seeing. i later realized that cp = corner permutation and ep= edge permutation, so just bonehead stuff on my part.



well, for future anyway, the xyz are cube rotations. usually you have x following R face, y following U face and z following F face (so like x' would be rotating in the same direction as R')

the w is for a double layer turn. another notation people use for it is a lowercase letter (like, Dw and d are the same)


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## choipster (Oct 31, 2007)

oh, ok. thanks hait2.


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