# How long to spend learning letter pairs?



## Leo123 (Jan 23, 2015)

Hello guys I am new to blindsolving how long should you spend learning letter pairs? Should you learn them so for example someone sais what does SD equal and you can tell them straight away or should you not spend loads of time learning them so you learn them briefly.


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## ~Adam~ (Jan 23, 2015)

You just need to know them or be able to improvise. You can ask Bertie to send you my list and practice web page.


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## LucidCuber (Jan 23, 2015)

Leo123 said:


> Hello guys I am new to blindsolving how long should you spend learning letter pairs? Should you learn them so for example someone sais what does SD equal and you can tell them straight away or should you not spend loads of time learning them so you learn them briefly.




I just had my first BLD sucess 3 days ago, and I don't know all my pairs off by heart yet, of course that makes my memo a bit slow now, but you'll pick it up over time. You've got almost 600 combinations so you don't need to memorise them before you start blindsolving.


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## Goosly (Jan 23, 2015)

Leo123 said:


> Hello guys I am new to blindsolving how long should you spend learning letter pairs?



When you are new to blindsolving, you can just improvise words during memo.


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## Berd (Jan 23, 2015)

I can lend you my list, or give you tips on hard ones.


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## timeless (Jan 23, 2015)

Berd said:


> I can lend you my list, or give you tips on hard ones.



im having trouble some letter pairs as well, like XU, XV, XE,


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## Berd (Jan 23, 2015)

timeless said:


> im having trouble some letter pairs as well, like XU, XV, XE,


Switch to Y!!!


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## Leo123 (Jan 23, 2015)

Berd said:


> I can lend you my list, or give you tips on hard ones.



Did you make up your letter pairs or did you get it from a website. If you did please link me.


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## Leo123 (Jan 23, 2015)

Berd said:


> Switch to Y!!!



How many words do you have to memorise in a solve?


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## Berd (Jan 23, 2015)

Leo123 said:


> Did you make up your letter pairs or did you get it from a website. If you did please link me.


I'll forward you Adams. Pm me your e-mail. Also, a cube is ~20 letters = 10 words


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## TDM (Jan 23, 2015)

Leo123 said:


> How many words do you have to memorise in a solve?


20 letters/10 letter pairs/10 words/3-4 images for one 3BLD solve.


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## A Leman (Jan 23, 2015)

I think it's good to know them by heart. I know every pair almost automatically and can go through all of them very quickly. The better you know them the less energy it takes to use and recall them. I learned them by drilling them. For a while, I would go through every edge image while holding a cube Blindfolded and imagining the shape of the commutator cases every night before going to sleep.I'd also practice by picking a letter and timing how long it took to go through the 26 letter pairs. It takes ~7-10 seconds. With the amount of drill and kill that I have done, I don't think I will ever forget my letter pairs. I don't need to drill much anymore and occasionally practicing keeps them fast. 




timeless said:


> im having trouble some letter pairs as well, like XU, XV, XE,


XU=Xu is Vietnamese currency
XV=Xavier from X-men
XE=Xenophilius Lovegood from Harry Potter


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## sneaklyfox (Jan 23, 2015)

I think it's probably best to come up with your own images rather than use someone else's list. Usually the first things that come your mind are best I think. But I guess as long as you know the list well it doesn't really matter in the end.


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## tseitsei (Jan 23, 2015)

timeless said:


> im having trouble some letter pairs as well, like XU, XV, XE,



XU = I have nothing good. In my scheme I can use X or Z they both mean the same piece and I use zulu for ZU
XV = XaVi (spanish football player) or XaVier (Charles Xavier from X-men)
XE = XEna the warrior princess


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## Ollie (Jan 23, 2015)

Because the common theme of X is dead/electrocuted something, for me XU is "kill you"  but it has to sound like this.

XV- Vinnie Jones. Not sure why, it used to be a few different things, but you can just arbitrarily assign cool images to bad letter pairs. Use Anki to rehearse them and other hard ones.

XE - sexy, or eXEcute


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## ~Adam~ (Jan 23, 2015)

I double up QZ and XY to make finding a word easier.


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## Hssandwich (Jan 23, 2015)

Try to include innuendos or something that will make you remember the memo. Works for me!


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## timeless (Jan 24, 2015)

cube-o-holic said:


> I double up QZ and XY to make finding a word easier.



what do you mean double up? like u can interchange those letter?


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## ~Adam~ (Jan 24, 2015)

timeless said:


> what do you mean double up? like u can interchange those letter?



Yes. Can usually jump straight to one if the other isn't on the tip of my brain.


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## Rocky0701 (Jan 24, 2015)

For pairs that start with X, I just use the Shh sound, so XU would be shu (shoe). Some others would be XP (ship), XQ (I think of Shaquille O' Neal since people call him Shaq or a shack, or shocking someone), XG (I think of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, or someone shrugging. It makes X much easier.


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## Leo123 (Jan 24, 2015)

Me and Bertie use Y instead of X because it's so much easier to make words with Y.


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## cmhardw (Jan 25, 2015)

I like the double up idea for letter pairs as long as your doubled image doesn't conflict with another image or another doubled image. As a general rule I stick to one pair = one image, but I will always use whatever comes to mind first when I see a letter pair. This has led to me rewriting letter pairs sometimes when my prepared image is hard to remember and some other image always comes to kind first.

I took about 4 months to create my own letter pair list, with help from a previously written list. The more work you put in outside of BLD solving, then the easier your solves will be letter. I've found that to be a good general rule of thumb for BLD letter pair memo.


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