# Square-1 BLD



## Dorsenstein (Aug 13, 2008)

I know not many people can solve a square-1 blindfolded, but if you can please tell me where you learned the method. It would be greatly appreciated!


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## Stefan (Aug 13, 2008)

I'm not sure anyone "can solve the square-1 blindfolded", I consider that the ability to do it consistently. The one time I tried, I got a shape close to double-square, that was crucial to succeed because I don't have a complete method (or maybe I somewhat did but it would've required a lot more mental tracing to get to cube shape). So I've done it, but I wouldn't say I can do it. Don't know about the others, I haven't heard about a method that doesn't require to learn a lot of data. If you can invent one and make it easy, you'd get famous (not saying it's necessarily hard, I haven't thought enough about it).


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## Lucas Garron (Aug 13, 2008)

The best thing is probably memorizing the permutation of the 6-corner shapes, speed BLD into them, and then 3-cycle/2-cycle/whatever inside cube shape. I was so going to do this, until I gave up on Square-1.

Good luck; it's not at all impossible.


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## AvGalen (Aug 14, 2008)

I don't want to be famous for this, but it is actually possible to solve Square-1 without making it Square first. When I was a kid I just solved it piece by piece.

If anyone can do that blindfolded they should get famous


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## Dorsenstein (Aug 14, 2008)

Lucas, i don't really understand, maybe I'm just reading it wrong but do you mean memorize what the algorithms to get it from a "star" to a square do to the pieces? if that's the case what about getting to a "star" . It will take alot of memorization and knowing where the pieces are after you get it into a square will be hard.

I will do it!


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## AvGalen (Aug 14, 2008)

The 6 corner shape Lucas talks about and the star you talk about are exactly the same.
Lucas doesn't want to get it to square. He wants to get it to star and know what happens from there to square (just like you)


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## Dorsenstein (Aug 14, 2008)

Okay good. i'm just trying to start from a solved state, perform the alg, and then see what it does but that's really hard. I'll just keep working on and I hope I get it!


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## smskill12 (Aug 17, 2008)

hmm it must be bit hard to do it bld
i guess if there was no method u just have to really know where ur pieces are


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## Swordsman Kirby (Aug 17, 2008)

You need lots of practice in speed BLD for the cubeshape tracing. After that it's trivial.


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## Dorsenstein (Aug 18, 2008)

Swordsman Kirby said:


> You need lots of practice in speed BLD for the cubeshape tracing. After that it's trivial.


Yes, the part from scrambled to cube will be hard, but I'm just going to work on a method for the later steps.


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## joey (Aug 18, 2008)

From cube-shape, it's pretty easy.


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## Dorsenstein (Aug 18, 2008)

I'm pretty sure I figured out a way to memorize where the pieces go on the star to cube algs. I'm going to post it here and see how you like it.

Step 1: Starting from the top left(as in to left of the middle slice) memorize the pieces as a letter-number combination





The corner on the top left of the tulip is T1, the edge piece below it is T2, and so on, all the way up to T10(for the top) 


Step 2: Use Letters for the pieces in the square shape(for example the BLU corner would be the Back Left Up corner) FU would be the Front Up edge. You would then memorize what pieces go where for example the T1 piece might go to FRD. (this is just an example, I'm not sure where it actually goes.)

Step 3: rerun where the pieces go until you think you have it.
T1 to FRD, T2 to DL, T3 to UB, and so on.

Step 4: know whether this algorithm flips the middle layer or not.

Step 5: Execute the algorithm

All ideas would be greatly appreciated.

NOTE: the algs would do the same thing every time, therefore memorizing where the pieces go could be like memorizing PLL algs (really long PLL algs, for that matter)

Another note: This would also be done for the bottom

Yet Another Note: I have a very, very short memory, therfore I do not do BLD. I would greatly appreciate people to test this method out and tell me how it goes.


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## Dorsenstein (Aug 18, 2008)

As for the CP step, I noticed that the alg / (3,-3) / (3,0) / (-3,0) / (0,3) / (-3,0) / Switches two Corners as well as two edges. I really don't want for people to have to memorize more algs, so should I just tell them to perform the alg and then perform the parity alg. or should I make up new algs?


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## joey (Aug 18, 2008)

That's pretty obvious. But you have to get it to one of those shapes first, which takes several moves too.


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## Stefan (Aug 18, 2008)

Dorsenstein said:


> I really don't want for people to have to memorize more algs, so should I just tell them to ...


Which people?

And as others have said, once you're at cube shape and know where everything is, it's trivial. Getting there is the interesting part.


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## Mike Hughey (Aug 18, 2008)

I'm starting to think that maybe it wouldn't be all that impossible to learn all the data. It seems like you could put each piece's start-to-destination locations in a single letter pair, using a scheme something like the one Dorsenstein suggests, with some work. If I were to put 4 images at each of my Roman Room locations (instead of my usual 3), since after all it would be a long-term memorization, I would be able to put 2 possible starting arrangements in each room. Right now I have just 15 rooms, but with 33 rooms, I could have room for 65 possible starting arrangements, which if I remember correctly is the number of possible starting arrangements not including mirrors.

So basically by using my current memo scheme to store the data, it wouldn't be that big of a stretch. If I went with Stefan's suggestion of allowing tracing one move by hand, it would fit easily in my memory scheme.

Of course, there would still be the matter of organizing the different positions in a way so I could find them, and then remembering the single "proper" algorithm to do each one. But those don't seem completely insurmountable.

It does seem like a lot of work, but now that I think about it, it really doesn't seem impossible. Am I missing something?

Edit: It took me a couple of years, but I finally got around to it. My method is here:
http://skarrie.se/square1blind/

I can sub-10 square-1 BLD consistently now with this method. Sub-5 should be very easy to get to.


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## Dorsenstein (Aug 18, 2008)

Okay Stefan. Well, I think my method is a pretty good Idea and Mike Hughey's 
memorization scheme is superb, those two combined would make it somewhat manageable.

By people I mean the people that want to solve a square-1 blindfolded.


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## Stefan (Aug 19, 2008)

Dorsenstein said:


> By people I mean the people that want to solve a square-1 blindfolded.


I know. I just think there pretty much aren't any.

Back when I was trying to find a reasonable method, I looked at the shape graph and tried a greedy approach to decide which shapes to learn. I think there's a shape that has 17 neighbour shapes, so that's one that should probably be learned. I don't remember how far I got with the analysis, though.


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## Swordsman Kirby (Aug 23, 2008)

Dorsenstein said:


> As for the CP step, I noticed that the alg / (3,-3) / (3,0) / (-3,0) / (0,3) / (-3,0) / Switches two Corners as well as two edges. I really don't want for people to have to memorize more algs, so should I just tell them to perform the alg and then perform the parity alg. or should I make up new algs?



T-perms and Y-perms.


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