# Cubing, but not for speed



## Bryant (Feb 10, 2009)

I brought a cube to a 3 day getaway with some friends. Because they gave up the possibility of learning a full solution in 3 days, we thought of a different way to cube.

We'd start with a solved cube, have one of us scramble it in exactly 4 5 or 6 moves, and then have someone else solve it in exactly 4 5 or 6 moves. No point in learning or using methods here, since you have to solve it exactly the way it was scrambled. I find this is a greater test of one's spatial grasp of the cube and is more entertaining.

Is there a name for this already? I'm sure someone's come up with it.

Tell me what you guys think of this.


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## DcF1337 (Feb 10, 2009)

I don't know the "official" name for this, but I think calling it "reverse-scrambling" is a good idea.

I do this once in a while with my friends. It's pretty manageable with 5-6 moves but once you reach 8, it's almost impossible!


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## d4m4s74 (Feb 10, 2009)

if you master it (get to 26 moves) you can win any lowest-moves comp


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## peterbat (Feb 10, 2009)

DcF1337 said:


> It's pretty manageable with 5-6 moves but once you reach 8, it's almost impossible!



I can reverse 7 correctly around 40% of the time -- a lot of PLLs are around 14-ish moves, and it's easy to end up with something like a T-perm at the end by accident.


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## qqwref (Feb 10, 2009)

d4m4s74 said:


> if you master it (get to 26 moves) you can win any lowest-moves comp



Uh. Do you mean 20 or something? Because even a computer wouldn't be able to reverse a 26-move scramble without an extremely huge amount of luck. (It would be much more likely to give an optimal solution of, say, 18 or 19 moves.)


This is a pretty fun event to play around with, and I really like how people who don't even cube can do it. Personally I think it's a great way to build a 'feel' for how pieces on the cube move and fit together, something which is really essential for block building or fewest moves solving.


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## Bryant (Feb 10, 2009)

I've been thinking of ways to make it competitive. Maybe approach it the same way you do blindfolded solving: start the timer immediately when you see the cube and have someone monitor the number of moves?


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## hr.mohr (Feb 10, 2009)

Bryant you are describing Fewest Moves Solving where each competitor get's the same scramble and 1 hour to write down a solution in fewest moves possible. It's a very challenging and fun event to compete in.


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## joey (Feb 10, 2009)

hr.mohr said:


> Bryant you are describing Fewest Moves Solving where each competitor get's the same scramble and 1 hour to write down a solution in fewest moves possible. It's a very challenging and fun event to compete in.



Not really, you only scramble with a small amount of moves and have to reverse it.
My ex got very good at it. She did some 7-9 move before.


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## ManuK (Feb 10, 2009)

How do experienced cubers fare at this (reverse-scrambling)?

I can always reverse scramble 5 moves ones. Most 6 moves. Have not tried 7 moves.(I doubt I will be able to do even 8 moves with a reasonable amount of consistency).There should be time limit like 30s or 1 min,right?


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## Mike Hughey (Feb 10, 2009)

I used this with my daughters for a couple of months before I actually taught them to solve the cube. I think it really helped them understand how the cube worked, and it made it much easier to teach them how to solve when I eventually started to teach them.

My 4-year-old daughter can do 3-move scrambles about 50% of the time. 4 is usually beyond her, though.


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## ManuK (Feb 10, 2009)

@Mike Hughey, what about you?.Have you felt a big difference in the way you reverse scramble now, and before when, you were just a beginner.


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## Mike Hughey (Feb 10, 2009)

Yes, I guess I'm a little better at it than I was to begin with. Mainly due to practicing fewest moves, I think. But I'm still not very good at it. Like you, I can get a lot of 6-move ones (I'm not sure if I can really claim "most", but certainly a lot of them), but 7 moves usually seems pretty outrageously difficult.


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## ManuK (Feb 10, 2009)

Thanks, Mike Hughey (shall I call you Mike). I was curious to know how other cubers fared. And my assumption is based on insufficient data (have tried this only 10-15 times,6 move only 3 times I guess).

So, those who are good at FMC,would be able to do 8 moves consistently (considering there is a time limit like 1 min)?


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## Kian (Feb 10, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> I used this with my daughters for a couple of months before I actually taught them to solve the cube. I think it really helped them understand how the cube worked, and it made it much easier to teach them how to solve when I eventually started to teach them.
> 
> My 4-year-old daughter can do 3-move scrambles about 50% of the time. 4 is usually beyond her, though.



and by next week you'll have her doing 4x4 blind solves, i'm sure.


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## Mike Hughey (Feb 10, 2009)

ManuK said:


> Thanks, Mike Hughey (shall I call you Mike). I was curious to know how other cubers fared. And my assumption is based on insufficient data (have tried this only 10-15 times,6 move only 3 times I guess).
> 
> So, those who are good at FMC,would be able to do 8 moves consistently (considering there is a time limit like 1 min)?



Yes, call me Mike.

I suspect 8 moves consistently would be tough for most people, but I'd be interested in hearing from them. (Especially the fewest moves experts.) Maybe I'm just unusually bad at it, but 8 moves seems really hard to me.


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## Garmon (Feb 10, 2009)

I do this with my friends all the time, but I always end up saying, 
'oh just do 20 more so I can solve it normally'
since it can get boring.


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## ManuK (Feb 10, 2009)

Mike, 
I was not aware that you were ranked #53 in FMC!!(I knew you were good with doing big cubes blindfolded, and do sub-2 3x3 BLD). It was just that I was under the impression that those good at FMC, have much higher spatial-ability.

If you don't mind, may I ask you,what method you use for FMC?(I guess many would use a combination of the various blockbuilding techniques based on the situation). Won't the last layer contribute substantially to the move count(or do you induce OLL/PLL skip)?


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## Mike Hughey (Feb 10, 2009)

ManuK said:


> Mike,
> I was not aware that you were ranked #53 in FMC!!(I knew you were good with doing big cubes blindfolded, and do sub-2 3x3 BLD). It was just that I was under the impression that those good at FMC, have much higher spatial-ability.
> 
> If you don't mind, may I ask you,what method you use for FMC?(I guess many would use a combination of the various blockbuilding techniques based on the situation). Won't the last layer contribute substantially to the move count(or do you induce OLL/PLL skip)?



I'm not sure what your thought is about #53 in FMC. That's really pretty average; there are only 187 people with successful solves in competition, because it's not done all that often. So #53 is not very good and not very bad either - it's just average.

One of my biggest advantages in fewest moves is my knowledge of commutators from doing BLD. So if I can get everything solved except a few corners, I can pretty much always find a passable insertion to do instead of a PLL. And I know all the OLL cases, so that gives me a lot of different ways to do OLLs to find a case with a few corners left to solve. If I ever can't find a good finish involving an insertion, most often it means a very bad result because as you mention the last layer really messes up the move count. To start, I do simple blockbuilding, usually - mostly I try to find the best 2x2x3 block I can find and then go from there.


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## coinman (Feb 10, 2009)

I always called this "Backtracking". And i have also done it a lot with non cubers.


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## ManuK (Feb 11, 2009)

Thanks Mike, for such a lucid explanation. If someone were to learn the ZB algs,(those for the last layer) and setup the LL so that 1-LLL can be performed (may not always be the optimal move count maybe,but still can be used in a considerable number of FMC situations),won't he be able to perform really well? (Of course,requires learning 493 algs!!)


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## qqwref (Feb 11, 2009)

Bryant said:


> I've been thinking of ways to make it competitive. Maybe approach it the same way you do blindfolded solving: start the timer immediately when you see the cube and have someone monitor the number of moves?



This could actually work. You could hold it something like a spelling bee, have many rounds and in each round give a slightly harder scramble (but the same one to everyone) and tell them how many moves it is using either ftm or stm, and those who fail are immediately eliminated. Each competitor has a maximum of, say, one minute to solve the cube from when they first see it, and they are not allowed to ever backtrack and must solve the cube in the minimum possible number of moves (which the judge should watch for). So maybe you'll start out with 3 or 4 move scrambles and almost everyone will continue, but when it gets up to 6 or 7 it will get interesting, and perhaps after a few 7s or 8s only one person will be left


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## Mike Hughey (Feb 11, 2009)

ManuK said:


> Thanks Mike, for such a lucid explanation. If someone were to learn the ZB algs,(those for the last layer) and setup the LL so that 1-LLL can be performed (may not always be the optimal move count maybe,but still can be used in a considerable number of FMC situations),won't he be able to perform really well? (Of course,requires learning 493 algs!!)



Yes, it appears you're right (see the fewest moves results):
http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/p.php?i=2003ZBOR02



(Note that he held the world record for a VERY long time!)


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## Bryant (Feb 11, 2009)

Thanks for the replies guys, it's good to know that so many others enjoy this mode of cubing too.

Personally, I find that I do more thinking than reacting when solving the cube in this manner.


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## Faz (Feb 11, 2009)

Heh, I do that with my brother, who can't solve the cube. His "PB" is 5 moves I think.


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## ManuK (Feb 11, 2009)

I tried this today with my friend.He included slice moves in his 5 move scramble(twice) and I wasn't able to solve it both times. And thanks once again Mike, for that info.


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## joey (Feb 11, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> My 4-year-old daughter can do 3-move scrambles about 50% of the time. 4 is usually beyond her, though.


Hmm. 
4 years old, can do 3 moves.
x years old, can do (x - 1) moves.
Mike.. you should be able to do like 99 moves!


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## Mike Hughey (Feb 11, 2009)

joey said:


> Mike Hughey said:
> 
> 
> > My 4-year-old daughter can do 3-move scrambles about 50% of the time. 4 is usually beyond her, though.
> ...


Shows I just don't have as much talent as my daughter, I guess.


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## joey (Feb 11, 2009)

Well, my theory only works up until the ages of 26 actually, because anything above 25 moves can be solved with an optimal 25 moves (or whatever the upper bound is now)

So I'm letting you off this time Mike  (but no doubt she has more talent anyway )


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## ThePizzaGuy92 (Feb 11, 2009)

my record is 9, haha, i used to like doing this. I ought to try 10 sometime


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## abr71310 (Feb 11, 2009)

My friend and I (he can't solve) do 4 - 5 move scrambles nowadays (just started... two days ago? LOL); I get a 70% success and he's high 90s percent; but i mean it's quite cool that others do it...

I like HTM the best; it lets you mess with their heads when you do something like R F2 U R2.... ;P


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## qqwref (Feb 11, 2009)

If you're really hardcore, you use axial turn metric. Try to solve this 4-move scramble: R L2 B' F2 U D F B'

This whole idea raises an interesting point: what is the farthest point on the cube with exactly one optimal solution?  Of course if we did this in competition we would only want to give positions with one solution, so this would be very useful to know.


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## JBCM627 (Feb 11, 2009)

qqwref said:


> If you're really hardcore, you use axial turn metric. Try to solve this 4-move scramble: R L2 B' F2 U D F B'



Those are much harder to recognize. Its a lot easier to see solutions to short scrambles using one quarter turn per axis than multiple moves on an axis.

Actually, I wonder how much faster (or slower) you could reach a random state using ATM (as opposed to HTM or QTM)... of course normalized by the number of possible moves in each metric or something. Interesting consideration for this thread (particularly this), since a lot of people could probably scramble faster using ATM. At least, for competitions qq isn't at


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## beingforitself (Feb 11, 2009)

Mike Hughey said:


> I suspect 8 moves consistently would be tough for most people, but I'd be interested in hearing from them. (Especially the fewest moves experts.) Maybe I'm just unusually bad at it, but 8 moves seems really hard to me.



It's all about practice, as are most things; 7x7x7 BLD probably seemed pretty hard and "out there" to you when you first started with 3x3x3 BLD. Before I started spending more time on regular speedcubing I would do the "direct solve game" maybe 1-2 hours a night. After about a month of this I was doing 6 and 7 move scrambles with pretty much 100% success, and 8 and 9 move scrambles with about a 50% success rate. Sometimes I would experiment with 10+ move scrambles, and my success rate dropped to maybe 3-5%. Additionally, when direct-solving scrambles like this I would encounter bizarre things, such as solving a 10 move scramble in 12 moves, a 13 move scramble in 11 moves, things of this nature.

I would consider myself about average as far as spatial reasoning / general intelligence goes, and I am certainly not an expert in any of the cubing fields (I've only been at it about a year, and not with a lot of dedication). The more you do it, the more your brain starts to develop intuitive rules for governing different direct solve "cases," just like Fridrich users do with cross-building after solving the cross thousands upon thousands of times.

<opinion>
Given my experience, I find it reasonable to think that if someone was spending 5-6 hours a day on this (as quite a few people seem willing to do with speedcubing), they could get up to at least 10-11 move scrambles with close to 100% accuracy, and probably higher order scrambles than that with more questionable accuracy. I hesitate to say if anyone could ever get to the magic number 20, but I imagine that people in the late 1990s would have been pretty skeptical if you told them that people today would be achieving sub-11 averages with pure Fridrich method. All it takes is a bright and/or talented person willing to put in the time.
</opinion>

PS: All of this is concerning half-turn metric.


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