# Will Smith is faster than any of you in F2L !!



## adragast (Mar 10, 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUncHGvBuks

He managed F2L in 2 seconds. If only he has had a LL skip...


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## MAHTI-ANSSI (Mar 10, 2008)

He should really practise his LL.


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## Lofty (Mar 10, 2008)

there was only 2 seconds of f2l shown. I think the timer could have been added in on top of an incomplete clip. With all the talk of two minutes I think they would have been very impressed with under one minute.


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## Dene (Mar 10, 2008)

Lol, that's awesome!


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## rubiks to the third (Mar 10, 2008)

they defnitly only scrambled the LL. that ****es me off because now everyone will think will smith is a genius because he can do a 4 look LL. LL in 55 seconds lawl.


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## Lofty (Mar 10, 2008)

Slightly before 30 the hostess says "1 minute left" if his time limit was 2 minutes he would have already been going the cube for over 30 seconds which is time to get f2l...


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## rubiks to the third (Mar 10, 2008)

Lofty said:


> Slightly before 30 the hostess says "1 minute left" if his time limit was 2 minutes he would have already been going the cube for over 30 seconds which is time to get f2l...


if u do a 55 second LL, thers no way you can do 30 second f2l


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## Lofty (Mar 10, 2008)

Yes... In the f2l there is not much too it.. he could do keyhole or just regular LBL for that there is no variation. You do an alg 4 times nothing to repeat. (ok you may have to repeat if you get to middle edges in the LL) If the LL he learned requires him to do algs loads of times in a row and if he forgets which way to orient the cube or something...


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## badmephisto (Mar 11, 2008)

its kinda weird that they taught him how to solve it for the movie. Did he request that someone teach him, or was that actually a part of his job? Certainly if he solved in in 1980's he wouldn't be solving it using bastardized beginner's method though... he would have derived some commutators or something like that.


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## Hadley4000 (Mar 11, 2008)

badmephisto said:


> its kinda weird that they taught him how to solve it for the movie. Did he request that someone teach him, or was that actually a part of his job? Certainly if he solved in in 1980's he wouldn't be solving it using bastardized beginner's method though... he would have derived some commutators or something like that.



http://youtube.com/watch?v=stqdx6_Xt-k


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## alltooamorous (Mar 11, 2008)

badmephisto said:


> its kinda weird that they taught him how to solve it for the movie. Did he request that someone teach him, or was that actually a part of his job? Certainly if he solved in in 1980's he wouldn't be solving it using bastardized beginner's method though... he would have derived some commutators or something like that.



He requested to learn how to solve a cube for the movie. The actual person he plays, never solved a cube. But it definitely adds to the movie, since it shows how much determination he had.


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## joey (Mar 11, 2008)

badmephisto said:


> Certainly if he solved in in 1980's he wouldn't be solving it using bastardized beginner's method though... he would have derived some commutators or something like that.



I don't know why you say that. He could have come up with a method like that, Fridrich and lots others did.


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## Lucas Garron (Mar 11, 2008)

joey said:


> badmephisto said:
> 
> 
> > Certainly if he solved in in 1980's he wouldn't be solving it using bastardized beginner's method though... he would have derived some commutators or something like that.
> ...


But not nearly with such nice algs. I've found several F2L inserters on my own (trying to be as intuitive as possible in moving and restoring blocks, and I don't think I'd have found the short one easily and adopted it (and if we're not using fingertricks, another may be fine - I remember Randelshofer has another 7-mover). LL would be worse. You might get a fuzzy idea about commutators, but wouldn't have so many good algs, and at first not a clear solving approach/order...

Does anyone disagree that it's almost impossible/completely unrealistic that anyone would have found a good "modern beginner's method"-like-solution, like the one Will Smith uses, back in the 80's (without a lot more refinement/practice than suggested in the movie)?


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## rubiks to the third (Mar 11, 2008)

joey said:


> badmephisto said:
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> 
> > Certainly if he solved in in 1980's he wouldn't be solving it using bastardized beginner's method though... he would have derived some commutators or something like that.
> ...



i think i read somewhere that he was coached on how to solve it for pursuit of happiness. i think everyone who honestly believes that will smith, the fresh prince, figured out his own method in the 80's is being a little naive.


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## badmephisto (Mar 12, 2008)

rubiks to the third said:


> joey said:
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> > badmephisto said:
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i was not suggesting that all, you misunderstood me. Will Smith requested that he be taught how to solve the Rubik's cube for the movie, so that he can solve it on camera and actually look legit. But they taught him a beginners method as the video demonstrates. I was just saying that if they wanted it to look authentic on the camera, they should have taught him some commutators instead, because that is how a man in 1980's would most likely solve the cube... you don't just come out with a perfect beginner's method out of blue.


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## abbracadiabra (Mar 12, 2008)

Lucas Garron said:


> Does anyone disagree that it's almost impossible/completely unrealistic that anyone would have found a good "modern beginner's method"-like-solution, like the one Will Smith uses, back in the 80's (without a lot more refinement/practice than suggested in the movie)?



Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I don't think it's unrealistic that someone could solve the cube in the 80's (or anytime) without understanding commutators. I did... and never knew what a commutator was. This is how I did it.

My "light bulb" moment came as I was sweeping up all the parts and pieces of a Rubik's cube that I had smashed in frustration, and noticing the core with the center pieces still attached. It was only then that it dawned on me that the center pieces didn't move (duh...), and that corner pieces couldn't be exchanged with edge pieces and vice versa (double duh...). Once I understood that, I realized that the center piece told me where all the other parts and pieces were supposed to go, and that each corner piece could only go into one of 8 places, and each edge piece could only go into one of 12 places. My process went something like this:

I solved the corners on the first layer first by
1. Putting a corner piece in place.
2. Moving it out of the way.
3. Putting the next corner in place.
4. Moving it out of the way.
5. Repeating until four corners in one layer were done.

Then I turned the cube over and oriented the remaining four corner pieces in consecutive order by rotating one corner, then putting the second corner in the first corner's place and executing the move in reverse. 

Then I permuted the corners of the second layer (opposite side) one piece at a time by taking out a misplaced corner piece in the URF position with R' D R, then rotating the top layer until the place where it belonged was in the URF position and reversing the move with R' D' R. I would repeat this as needed until all corners were in the right place respective to each other. 

Then I would solve the edges on the top and bottom layer by using the free space in the middle (E) layer to move things around in. I would rotate the front face a quarter turn so that a misplaced edge piece from the top layer was now in the middle layer and then rotate the middle layer until the correct edge piece came between the corners. Then I would rotate the front face back to it's original position without having messed up any of my already solved pieces. I would rotate the top layer to put each "target" edge spot in the UF position, and repeat that process until I had solved the 8 edge pieces on the top and bottom layers.

That left me only the middle layer to orient and permute. I figured out that I could cycle the edge pieces on the middle layer with D2 M' D2, and would repeat that until I had the edges in the right position. 

Then, if I needed to orient the edges, I used the same idea as I did orienting the corners - I'd rotate a single edge piece, then move the next one into the first one's spot, and perform the move in reverse.

Voila... the cube was solved, and I never had a clue about commutators, conjugators, or notation. Within a couple of weeks I was able to solve the whole cube that way in under a minute. 

If I recall correctly, one doesn't see what method Will Smith uses to solve the cube in the movie. One first sees a scrambled cube in his hand, and then we see the last two or three face turns. So we don't have any idea what method he uses to solve it, although we know that those who are taught to solve the cube generally learn it layer-by-layer.


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## rubiks to the third (Mar 12, 2008)

badmephisto said:


> rubiks to the third said:
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> > joey said:
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oh i getchu


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## AvGalen (Mar 12, 2008)

abbracadiabra: You might not know it, but the proces you describe is actually a perfect description of using commutators . Perform an action on piece A, position piece B, undo the first action, reposition. (ABA'B')

But just so everyone knows, layer-by-layer was already how I learned in the early eighties and Fridrich also developed their methods back then. (some algs have been greatly improved since then, but the method already existed)


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## TimMc (Mar 12, 2008)

Lucas Garron said:


> Does anyone disagree that it's almost impossible/completely unrealistic that anyone would have found a good "modern beginner's method"-like-solution, like the one Will Smith uses, back in the 80's (without a lot more refinement/practice than suggested in the movie)?




It's possible. Before I started solving them a coworker was playing with one and solving it in less than a minute. He said that you just need to solve it layer by layer.

So went out and bought one and came up with a method to solve it in a few days. A few weeks later I managed an average of sub 1min 30sec

I guess it's up to interpretation as to whether or not saying "layer by layer" is giving everything away, and if taking a week to perfect finger tricks is considered a lot of refinement.

At the time I just played with it inf ront of the TV  after figuring it out I looked online for better methods to improve my speed because some of the move sequences were quite recursive.

Tim.


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## Markus Pirzer (Mar 12, 2008)

rubiks to the third said:


> joey said:
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He was coached by Tyson Mao, Toby Mao and Lars Petrus (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/trivia)


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## Rama (Mar 12, 2008)

I don't care what method he uses, I just want to meet him at an competition(I told Ron that it would have been funny if he also competed at Budapest).


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## Lucas Garron (Mar 13, 2008)

Rama said:


> I don't care what method he uses, I just want to meet him at an competition(I told Ron that it would have been funny if he also competed at Budapest).


Yeah, we still need a Smith.
But he didn't even attend Caltech Winter (_in San Francisco_) soon after The Pursuit of Happyness came out (which, I thought, would have been an excellent opportunity for him).


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## Stefan (Mar 13, 2008)

Or he could've joined Chris Gardner at the US Open last year.


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