# What Is Rowe Hessler's Blindfold Method?



## dChan (Apr 29, 2008)

I had always thought he used the 3-cycle method but as I looked over the UWR BLD board I saw that he mentioned a new method that involved no CO or EO. I emailed him asking about the method but he has not responded for quite a while. Does anyone know about his new method and would you care to elaborate if you do know about it?


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## tim (Apr 29, 2008)

It is a 3-cycle method. Some people call it "freestyle".


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## dChan (Apr 29, 2008)

So what is so new about it? I havn't been in the loop of things so I have no idea what frestyle edges or all those things are.


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## joey (Apr 29, 2008)

It's freeballin' son.


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## hait2 (Apr 29, 2008)

it's just.. freestyle. you remember and cycle stickers, so there's no need for orientation. there's no face restrictions, no algorithm restrictions. you can solve the first cycle using a setup to a Uperm if it's fast, the 2nd using a commutator from M2, the 3rd using just a commutator you make up on the spot, etc. it's very versatile & you can pick the best way to solve the current cycle rather than being restricted to setting up to a U permutation or moving the sticker to UB for an M2 commutator, etc.


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## joey (Apr 29, 2008)

hait2 said:


> it's just.. freestyle. you remember and cycle stickers, so there's no need for orientation. .


Hmm, not always true , If I saw there was only 2 corners misoriented, I might orient them...why? because it's freestyle! (also, if all corners are oriented, it is very easy to memo)


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## hait2 (Apr 29, 2008)

joey said:


> hait2 said:
> 
> 
> > it's just.. freestyle. you remember and cycle stickers, so there's no need for orientation. .
> ...



ok yes good point  the point of freestyle is that you just solve the cube however you feel like. if orienting a few of the pieces will avoid some difficult commutator situations later on, then you can choose to do that as well!
i just meant that there isn't a specific orientation phase that must be completed


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## dChan (Apr 29, 2008)

So, how would you remember stickers easily? Wouldn't you still have to remember their orientation. I know you would not need to orient them but you would need to know which way they are facing right?

Does there happen to be a guide on freestyle or is it so 'freestyle' that you need no guide?


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## joey (Apr 29, 2008)

It's so freestyle there is no guide.

You don't remember pieces, only stickers.

There is no such thing as orientation, only incorrect permutation of a piece that needs to be swapped with the opposite side of the same piece.


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## dChan (Apr 29, 2008)

Anyone have an example solve(with a short description of the memo process) I could see? 

Sorry if I'm being annoying but it is hard for me to wrap my head around this.


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## Lucas Garron (Apr 29, 2008)

http://speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=2021&highlight=freestyle
http://speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=2245&highlight=freestyle
http://speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=2543&highlight=freestyle
http://speedsolving.com/showthread.php?t=3403&highlight=freestyle

The curious thing about freestyle is that once you understand BLD and comms well enough it becomes a sort of "obvious" insight: In a sense, it's _the_ BLD method.
You memorize the permutation (and any special orientation) directly and purely (for visual, without even processing).

I have a page of freestyle comms. If you know understand a few of those and their application (that list is about as complete in its implication as I could make it), and understand sticker memo as in Pochmann of M2, and understand how/why 3-cycles work, all you have to do is a few solves to get used to the characteristics (and exceptions - really, try to work these out yourself before asking) and then practice.


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## dChan (Apr 29, 2008)

Thanks, Lucas. Those help out a lot.

So would you suggest this as the moethod a sub-5 BLD cuber should take on or do you think a new BLD cuber should just get right into this if he/she understands it well enough?


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## joey (Apr 29, 2008)

To anyone interested in BLD. I suggest being knowledgeable in M2, 3-cycle and old pochmann aswell.


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## hait2 (Apr 30, 2008)

as long as you understand the concept of cycling (i.e. pieces have a set place where they need to go) and the concept of stickers-not-moving-on-each-piece, you can go freestyle. the memorization would be similar to 3cycle but instead of remembering "this piece goes to that place" you remember "this part of this piece goes to that part of that place" which is basically the same thing


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## masterofthebass (Apr 30, 2008)

I know rowe does some weird stuff now, where he actually orients after permuting. Using comms and such, he permutes the fastest way, and has figured out how to keep track of orientation. At cornell, the reason why he didn't get a sub-1 was because he somewhat dropped the cube and regripped during a CO alg.


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## dChan (Apr 30, 2008)

Okay, so I guess it is only logical that you remember visually as opposed to by numbers because, this way, you can remember stickers as opposed to pieces + orientation. Thanks hait2, you explained it very well. Now I understand better, how the memo works for this. 

I think I will try this later today. Maybe I'll do some solves with my eyes open first before going blindfolded - that might be smarter(although I've never really done any part of a blindfold method with my eyes open, even when I'm doing example solves).


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## joey (Apr 30, 2008)

dChan said:


> Okay, so I guess it is only logical that you remember visually as opposed to by numbers because, this way, you can remember stickers as opposed to pieces + orientation. Thanks hait2, you explained it very well. Now I understand better, how the memo works for this.
> 
> I think I will try this later today. Maybe I'll do some solves with my eyes open first before going blindfolded - that might be smarter(although I've never really done any part of a blindfold method with my eyes open, even when I'm doing example solves).



I think you may be getting a little confused. Freestyle doesn't have to use visual memo, you *can* still use numbers.


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## hait2 (Apr 30, 2008)

dChan said:


> Okay, so I guess it is only logical that you remember visually as opposed to by numbers because, this way, you can remember stickers as opposed to pieces + orientation. Thanks hait2, you explained it very well. Now I understand better, how the memo works for this.
> 
> I think I will try this later today. Maybe I'll do some solves with my eyes open first before going blindfolded - that might be smarter(although I've never really done any part of a blindfold method with my eyes open, even when I'm doing example solves).



yes joey does have a point. you can still very well use numbers or images or anything else you like, to memorize freestyle/stickers, except you will need a more complex system.

for instance to memorize edges you previously needed 12 images (1 per edge) to remember permutation in the 3cycle method. So you'd remember "bear pineapple saw" for a (246) cycle where 2=bear, 4=pineapple, 6=saw or something like that

in freestyle, you can still do something similar but you will now need 24 images because each edge has 2 stickers. in fact your blue/yellow edge and your yellow/blue edge are now different although they are the same piece. 

so take the same (246) cycle but instead turn it into (UL RU BL). Keep in mind now, UL is different than LU. UL refers to the "U part of the UL piece". so UL RU BL means the "U part of the UL piece" goes to the "R part of the RU piece" which goes to the "B part of the BL piece". 

you can still assign images as you like, but you will need a different one for LU and UL because the "L part of the LU piece" and the "U part of the LU piece" aren't the same.

I hope that made some sense.


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## dChan (Apr 30, 2008)

Yes, but if you use numbers then you will have to also remember the orientation of the pieces(basically which way the sticker faces). Visual memo, seems logically, easier for fresstyle as you are solving stickers. If you are solving pieces then numbers as well as visual will work. But for stickers, visual works better, in my opinion. I am not the expert though, I am just speaking the way my mind comprehends it.

EDIT: hait2 got to this before me.


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## joey (Apr 30, 2008)

dChan said:


> Yes, but if you use numbers then you will have to also remember the orientation of the pieces(basically which way the sticker faces). Visual memo, seems logically, easier for fresstyle as you are solving stickers. If you are solving pieces then numbers as well as visual will work. But for stickers, visual works better, in my opinion. I am not the expert though, I am just speaking the way my mind comprehends it.
> 
> EDIT: hait2 got to this before me.


No, I said to you, you can use numbers. So, you can use numbers. Instead of 1-12, you have 1-24.
Images, for example, work just as well for sticker memo. I dunno, do the names Tim Habermaas or Dennis Strehalu mean anything to you? (if not I may have spelt them wrong! =p) Or Chris Hardwick even?


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## dChan (Apr 30, 2008)

joey said:


> dChan said:
> 
> 
> > Yes, but if you use numbers then you will have to also remember the orientation of the pieces(basically which way the sticker faces). Visual memo, seems logically, easier for fresstyle as you are solving stickers. If you are solving pieces then numbers as well as visual will work. But for stickers, visual works better, in my opinion. I am not the expert though, I am just speaking the way my mind comprehends it.
> ...



Ah, but you did not explain that well. I was thinking the way hait2 explained it so when you said that you can use numbers, I thought, "that's double the work though because now you have to deal with orientation" and by that I mean each piece would now have two numbers(or 3 for corners.). 

Images don't work for me. I have never been able to translate things into images. First of all, it takes some work to create a designated set of images for memo and second, even if you do it freestyle(whatever comes to mind at the moment) it would be hard for me to relate it to a cube because I would never have used it before. This is why I prefer pure visual or numbers.


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## joey (Apr 30, 2008)

I think that images lend themselves to multi-bld the best. So if you eventually want to get into that area, they might be worth a go.


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## dChan (Apr 30, 2008)

joey said:


> I think that images lend themselves to multi-bld the best. So if you eventually want to get into that area, they might be worth a go.



I would love to try multi-BLD but I think it would be very hard for me to adopt any kind of memory system. I can't imagine it being easy to get used to - is it?


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## joey (Apr 30, 2008)

dChan said:


> joey said:
> 
> 
> > I think that images lend themselves to multi-bld the best. So if you eventually want to get into that area, they might be worth a go.
> ...



For any BLD, you have to use some sort of memory system. Visual memory is a memory system (by the way, I'm not picking on you, but I've seen other people say the same thing)

For me, images havn't seemed to work too well, but thats probably because I havn't given them much of a chance. I hope someone else can give insight it images here..


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## dChan (May 1, 2008)

Sorry! I know visual and numbers is a memo system. I misspoke. I'm an idiot like that sometimes.

But yeah, I don't think I could take up systems like PAO because for me, it is harder to does "triple translating." E.g. Donald Ate Cheese, translates to Edge cycle (X X X) which doesn't make sense to me when I can just remember visually. But I can see how it might work for others.


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## hait2 (May 1, 2008)

i use images for my edges. to be honest i have no idea how you do it with visual. i've tried, definitely, but the slightest break in concentration and i have nothing to hold on to, no traces of what the visual route looked like at all. i can only do visual when i'm certain i can concentrate, and since i usually BLD with music/tv shows/semi-conversations, i doubt that would be possible for me.

i still visual corners, but that's definitely holding me back in my pathetic multi attempts, and i'm in the middle of transitioning to an image system for them as well. 

i *am* interested though. how do you remember the visual route? say you're doing a bld solve, a phone rings, so you hide the cube, talk on the phone for a bit. can you get back into the solve and still remember the cycle? even a 10second conversation in the middle of a solve and i *totally* forget the visual path unless i cheat and remember images as guide posts (say every 3rd-4th piece, i remember an image instead)


oh and by the way, pao doesn't do triple translating. when i see "james igniting a dog" which technically corresponds to the 10 11 4 cycle in my system (my system's just a=1 b=2 etc). but it's not like i translate j i d into 10 11 4 then into the pieces on the cube. it just goes straight into the pieces of the cube.
this was for my old system, when i did orientation-first edges. with freestyle, i just used my previously created images from pao instead. i don't have 3 images for each sticker now though, just one. it's another thing i'm working on because remembering "egg dog james" is harder than a PAO scene because PAO usually makes sense, and it's hard to make an image from "egg dog james"

i've taken the easy way out right now and pop an image into each place in my route. this takes up 3x as much space though (usually i'd pop a PAO scene in each stop-point instead). but there's a big difference between having 36images that I had and 72. i'm working on it though. can't wait til i finalize my pao system for each sticker pair.


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