# Big cubes BLD: Figuring out what to memorize



## Mike Hughey (Sep 12, 2007)

I have 2 issues with figuring out what to memorize that definitely cost me a good bit of time when doing 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 BLD.

First, for wing edges, what's the best way to figure out where each piece needs to go? I do it basically by tracing out where the piece is capable of going. So if a piece is in the UFr position, and needs to go to the BL edge, I'd see that it could go to UBl, and from there to BLd, without flipping, and then see if it needs to be flipped. But is there a better way than tracing it out? I often make mistakes and have to correct them after doing lots of memorization. This morning I wasted 5 minutes correcting my memorization in a 4x4x4 solve because I put one piece in the wrong place early in the cycle.

Second, how do you decide you're done with all the pieces of a given type? Believe it or not, I actually do it by putting down the cube on the table, and counting on my fingers through my memorized phrase to see if I've gotten them all. (And on center pieces, add the pieces that are already solved.) If not, I go back and look for the first one I missed, and then try again when I finish another cycle. But clearly that won't work if I want to be fast someday. How do the fast guys do this?


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## deadalnix (Sep 12, 2007)

For tracing edges, i use the notion of 3cycle edge orientation. Then, I split the emplacements in two categories. If the piece is correctly oriented (in a 3cycle bld way), the piece stay in the same emplacement categorie. If the piece is incorrectly oriented, she have to change.

I hope I'm clear enought, but it's difficult to explain without showing on the cube.


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 12, 2007)

deadalnix said:


> For tracing edges, i use the notion of 3cycle edge orientation. Then, I split the emplacements in two categories. If the piece is correctly oriented (in a 3cycle bld way), the piece stay in the same emplacement categorie. If the piece is incorrectly oriented, she have to change.
> 
> I hope I'm clear enought, but it's difficult to explain without showing on the cube.



Yes, I can see how that would work. Once you got used to the positions, it would probably be pretty quick. I'll have to try that out. Thank you.


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 12, 2007)

I found a method for keeping track of what has been done here:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/blindfoldsolving-rubiks-cube/message/1429

Chris Hardwick gives a very clever solution to the problem. I'll have to try it.


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 20, 2007)

I thought I would bring this up again. Chris's method for holding your fingers on the cubie of each face that you've memorized works very well for the center pieces (probably increased my speed by a couple of minutes), but I still have the problem with the wing edges (or just the edges on the 4x4x4). For the edges, I still just put down the cube and count through my memorization on my fingers to see if I'm up to 24 (minus any that are already in the right place) and therefore done. I'm curious what other people do to know they're finished memorizing the wing edges. And also, if you're not finished, how do you find the ones that are left?

Chris? Daniel? Trevor? Anyone?


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## jerjero (Sep 20, 2007)

*big cube bld tutorial*

can someone please here post a link on where i can learn big cube BLD.. please im begging all of you!!!


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 20, 2007)

jerjero said:


> can someone please here post a link on where i can learn big cube BLD.. please im begging all of you!!!



You can start with these on this forum:
http://www.speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=201
http://www.speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=697

Another thing which helped me tremendously was this walkthrough by Chris Hardwick of a 4x4x4 BLD solve:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/blindfoldsolving-rubiks-cube/message/1679

And this is a useful description of his memory method:
http://www.speedcubing.com/chris/memorizing.html

I hope those help. They were enough for me to learn how.

By the way, I still hope people will answer my question about how you know you're done memorizing the wing edges.


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## jerjero (Sep 21, 2007)

thank u mike thanks alot man this is a big help


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 21, 2007)

jerjero said:


> thank u mike thanks alot man this is a big help



You're very welcome - I'm glad I could help. Chris and Daniel did all the real work, though.

Back on my subject, for the 2 most recent 4x4x4 BLD solves I did (one successful, one not), I checked my times after memorizing just the edges - I memorize edges first, so that's the time spent orienting the cube and memorizing edges. It was 9:00 the first time, 9:30 the second. I spend about 30 seconds orienting the cube (I need to work on that), so that means I'm averaging close to 9 minutes just to memorize edges. That's 33% of my total memorize+solve time - just for edges! Memorization itself really isn't all that bad (and I have lots of easy ways I could go about trying to improve that, once it's my big problem), but I'm sure half of my time is spent either figuring out where each piece should go or counting to see if I'm done (and if I'm not, figuring out what piece to start with next). So if I could just get better at those two things, I could REALLY improve my big cube BLD times. So I'm still open to other suggestions.


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## rafal (Sep 21, 2007)

Maybe I will show you Mike how I handle this. I use letters for wing edges and create a story. Usually: 2 letters = 1 word. And during memorization I just count these words, so if my story has 9 words I know I've used 18 wings. And when I find 5 or 6 more, I know I'm done. If I somehow wasn't able to count these words during memorization, I repeat my story and can easily see that there are 9 words in it. As for the second question: how do I find the ones that are left? So, I know approximately which letters I’ve already used and where not to search. And as there are at least two wings left, it is not that hard to hit one of them. And even if I start with the wrong piece, I should notice it immediately – that I go through the same letters again. But, of course, I had similar problem before, and I think it all comes with practice. Just like figuring out, where a piece should go. Like others, I move the piece mentally along the cube to see where it fits. I try to use the shortest way possible. 
It takes me about 1:30 - 2:00 to memorize wings, I think.


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 21, 2007)

rafal said:


> Maybe I will show you Mike how I handle this. I use letters for wing edges and create a story. Usually: 2 letters = 1 word. And during memorization I just count these words, so if my story has 9 words I know I've used 18 wings. And when I find 5 or 6 more, I know I'm done. If I somehow wasn't able to count these words during memorization, I repeat my story and can easily see that there are 9 words in it. As for the second question: how do I find the ones that are left? So, I know approximately which letters I’ve already used and where not to search. And as there are at least two wings left, it is not that hard to hit one of them. And even if I start with the wrong piece, I should notice it immediately – that I go through the same letters again. But, of course, I had similar problem before, and I think it all comes with practice. Just like figuring out, where a piece should go. Like others, I move the piece mentally along the cube to see where it fits. I try to use the shortest way possible.
> It takes me about 1:30 - 2:00 to memorize wings, I think.



Well, it sounds like you really do it almost the same as me. You're just 5 to 6 times as fast as I am, that's all.  When I count, I add 2 for each word or word pair, so I'm really not doing it that differently, but I think that counting the words instead of the letters would probably help, so I'll try that - thanks for the suggestion. I guess finding where a piece should go is just practice, and I'm still bad at it, so I'll keep working on it.

It sounds like you're doing a "linked list" approach for solving, like I am. Chris Hardwick recently said it's a good beginner's method, but not good long-term because you have trouble doing more than a couple of cubes in a day because your stories blend together. I'm not having that problem yet, but maybe that's because I think up words to go with my letter pairs as I go (I don't have a whole list memorized, like Chris has), so I often use different words for different memorizations, which makes them less likely to blur together. And I'm outrageously slow. Do you have problems with multiple solves in a single day and blurring the stories together and getting confused?

You've really gotten good at big cubes BLD! How long have you been doing it?


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## rafal (Sep 22, 2007)

I don't know how to quote with your name inside 


> It sounds like you're doing a "linked list" approach for solving, like I am. Chris Hardwick recently said it's a good beginner's method, but not good long-term because you have trouble doing more than a couple of cubes in a day because your stories blend together. I'm not having that problem yet, but maybe that's because I think up words to go with my letter pairs as I go (I don't have a whole list memorized, like Chris has), so I often use different words for different memorizations, which makes them less likely to blur together. And I'm outrageously slow. Do you have problems with multiple solves in a single day and blurring the stories together and getting confused?


Yes, it looks like I’m doing a „linked list” approach. And I agree that doing 10 solves in a row with this method could be a difficult task  But, on the other hand, I can easily do 3 solves in a row without confusing anything, and that's all I need (I have many DNFs, but not because my stories blur together). Then I can rest for an hour and I won’t even remember those solves. 
To do more solves in a row I can (after memorizing a story) memorize one word in addition – 'house' or 'street' or 'air' - and have this word in my mind. This way, if I’ve memorized “street”, I would know that the story in this particular solve happens on the street. And it will be difficult to confuse it with another story, which happened somewhere else.


> You've really gotten good at big cubes BLD! How long have you been doing it?


Thanks! I have been solving 4x4bld for 6 months and 5x5bld for 2 months.


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## cmhardw (Sep 22, 2007)

Hi,

Quick reply as I am heading off to work, but the way I know I am finished memorizing wings is based on how many images I have already memorized when I come to what feels like the end of all the cycles. If I have to memorize a 24 cycle of wings I end up with 12 images where the last one is a single letter pair (which covers 23 pieces, since I always start with the same wing edge when memorizing). I know that this means I will use 4 journey locations with 3 images each, but the last image in the 4th location will be a single letter image instead of a letter pair image. If when memorizing I have a lot of smaller cycles, or I have a lot of solved pieces, then I'll come to the end of my first cycle and not yet be in my 4th journey location. Or I might be in the 4th journey location but only have memorized 1 image. I also have to account for how many new cycles I've started before getting to the 4th location. Once I have done this I can tell by how many letters I am short of the "ideal" 24 cycle memorization with 12 images and the last one being a single letter image. I then scan the cube and count the solved wings. I subtract the solved wings from the number I am missing, and that tells me how many more wings I have left to memorize.

It probably sounds more complicated than it is, it goes pretty quickly when memorizing. Just have an idea of how it feels to memorize a full 24 cycle, and when you are memorizing a cube, if you fall short of that 24 cycle "ideal" memorization then it will feel different, and you'll know you have more to go for this cube.

Hope that helps,
Chris


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## Mike Hughey (Sep 22, 2007)

Chris, thank you very much - that was quite helpful. And now I see one of the other benefits of Roman Rooms or journeys - much less to count to see how far you are. I may just start experimenting with that yet. (Not just for that reason, but it helps to have extra motivation.)

Rafal, you've really gotten better fast! I've been doing 4x4x4 BLD for 3 months and 5x5x5 BLD (successfully) for about 1 month - well, actually, just 3 successful solves so far. But I usually don't have time for more than a few attempts per week, so mostly I just do Arnaud's competition solves. That's kind of nice, because it gives me a documented record of how I've done on all my solves.


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 2, 2007)

I just wanted to say thank you very much to everyone who responded on this thread. My memorization times are coming down fast, and mostly because of improvements due to suggestions you've made. Thank you all very much.

I'm now down to about 10 minutes memorizing on the 4x4x4 and 20 minutes memorizing on the 5x5x5 (admittedly still VERY slow), and most of that time is actually spent memorizing now. I'm getting to the point now where I'm just going to have to get better at actually memorizing to improve my memorization times now - the mechanics are no longer such a big issue.


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