Blindfold Solving
I have started on the long road towards blindfold solving - mostly inspired by Mats Bergman on the speedsolving forums who has given me lots of encouragement. This page will document my learning journey - and it will be quite a journey: I am a slow learner!
Blindfold solving has always amazed me but I had no interest in being able to do it myself especially after hearing how much was involved! Being subscribed to the Youtube videos of badmephisto I came across his explanation of the Pochmann method.
This ingenious technique developed by Stefan Pochmann can be found on Stefan's website.
Here are the notes from the video...
My attempt at explaining how to solve the Rubik's cube blindfolded (Pochmann method). Its one of the few tutorials on how to do this on YouTube... and now I know why: because its really hard to make one :) Also, you really need to practice this method to get it down, because there are many things to keep in mind. I think I covered them all though. As always, don't hesitate to ask questions, I'm sure I left out some stuff. :(
OUTLINE
start - solving EDGES and all important concepts
9:39 - breaking into new cycles
11:18 - brief summary
13:00 - solving CORNERS
16:50 - PARITY fix
19:00 - Example solve and MEMORIZATION
27:00 - Example solve execution
29:02 - Closing comments
LINKS that explain the same method, but with slight variations:
http://www.stefan-pochmann.de/spocc/b...
http://solvethecube.110mb.com/ind29:02ex.p...
MEMORIZATION LINK (FORUM THREAD): http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/sho...
MY CLARIFICATIONS VIDEO:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=EeV4dAw...
ALGS:
PARITY FIX: Ra: y' [L U2' L' U2'] [L F'] [L' U' L U] [L F] L2' U y
--------------EDGES
ALGS:
T : [R U R' U'] [R' F] [R2 U' R'] U' [R U R' F']
Jb: [R U R' F'] {[R U R' U'] [R' F] [R2 U' R'] U'}
Ja: y' [R' U L'] [U2 R U' R' U2] [R L U'] y
TO SOLVE (EDGES):
YO: Jb
OY: l' Ja l
YG: T
GY: L' d L' T L d' L
YR: Ja
RY: l Jb l'
OG: L' T L
GO: d' L T L' d
OB: d2 L T L' d2
BO: d' L' T L d
BR: d L T L' d'
RB: d2 L' T L d2
RG: L T L'
GR: d L' T L d'
OW: l' Jb l
WO: D' L2 T L2 D
BW: D' l' Jb l D
WB: D2 L2 T L2 D2
RW: l Ja l'
WR: D L2 T L2 D'
GW: D l' Jb l D'
WG: L2 T L2
--------------
--------------CORNERS
ALGS:
Y : {F [R U' R' U'] [R U R' F']} {[R U R' U'] [R' F R F']}
Jb: U2 [R U R' F'] {[R U R' U'] [R' F] [R2 U' R'] U'} U2
Ja: [R' U L'] [U2 R U' R' U2] [R L U']
(note that Jb and Ja have to be executed while holding the cube a little differently.
its as if they required their own little setup moves as well)
TO SOLVE (CORNERS):
YB: Y
BO: F' Jb F
OY: R Ja R'
YR: Ja
RB: R' Y R
BY: R' F' Jb F R
YO: Jb
OG: F R Ja R' F'
GY: F Y F'
OB: R Y R'
BW: F' Y F
WO: R2 Ja R2
BR: D' R Y R' D
RW: R' Ja R
WB: R2 Y R2
RG: D F Jb F' D'
GW: D2 F' Y F D2
WR: D2 R2 Ja R2 D2
GO: F Jb F'
OW: D F' Y F D'
WG: F2 Y F2
number checking formula: #items = (#wrong pieces) + (#cycles) - 2
OK, my own progress has been rather slow - but that's just the way I am!
I started out by learning how to move the edges around one step at a time without a blindfold and without any memorisation. Also only using the T-Permutation. This is the simplest idea but some of the setup moves are quite long! My T-Perm is from Dan Harris' book: -
(RUR'U') R' F R2 U' R' U' (R U R' F')
After a while I added both J-Permutations to reduce the number of setup moves reuired: -
(RUR'F') (RUR'U') R' F R2 U' R' U' - just the T-Perm with the RUR'F' moved from the end to the start! This one swaps the Upper-Right and Upper-Front edges (with the side effect of swapping the two upper right corners).
R' U2 (RUR') U2 LU' R'U L' - a funny one! All muscle-memory. This one swaps the the Upper-Right and Upper-Back edges (with the side effect of swapping the two upper right corners).
When blindfold solving I always hold the cube oriented with Yellow on the upper face and Orange on the front face. I use cubes with the usual Western Rubik's BOY colour scheme so we have Yellow on U, White on D, Orange on F, Red, on B, Blue on R, Green on L.
My second stage was to develop my memorisation technique: using memorable object images for all 24 colour pairs. I adopted quite a few of Stefan's images and tried to incorporate some mnemonics too.
| Colour pair | Image | Colour pair | Image |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow Blue (YB - Up Right) | Homer Simpson - shirtless at a sporting event. The crowd is chanting "HOME-R", "HOME-R". This is the buffer position - aka the "HOME" position - nice eh? | Blue Yellow (BY - Right Up) | The Swedish flag. Anything Swedish - I often think of blindfold cubing master Mats Bergman. |
| Yellow Green (YG - Up Left) | Banana - not quite ripe, still a bit green | Green Yellow (GY - Left Up) | Green Beans with butter |
| Yellow Orange (YO - Up Front) | Duckling - fluffy yellow cutie with orange beak | Orange Yellow (OY - Front Up) | Orange Drink |
| Yellow Red (YR - Up Back) | French fries with ketchup - hot and tasty | Red Yellow (RY - Back Up) | RoYal Mail van - red with yellow logo |
| The middle layer... | |||
| Red Green (RG - Back Left) | Apple - tasty and healthy | Green Red (GR - Left Back) | Dinosaur - T-Rex, quite ferocious - GRrrrrr! |
| Red Blue (RB - Back Right) | Spiderman - red spidey suit with blue pants | Blue Red (BR - Right Back) | British Rail - "BR" Blue uniform with Red logo |
| Orange Green (OG - Front Left) | Orange - the fruit with a leaf and stalk - zesty | Green Orange (GO - Left Front) | Traffic lights indicating "GO" - they are not on red! |
| Orange Blue (OB - Front Right) | Anything Dutch - orange and blue shirts are popular in the Netherlands! | Blue Orange (BO - Right Front) | Mystery item - I don't have a fixed item for this colour pair! |
| The bottom layer... | |||
| White Green (WG - Down Left) | Polo mints | White Green | Xmas tree - with snow on it |
| White Blue | Donald Duck | Blue White | Smurf |
| White Orange | Fried Egg - white yellow is impossible! | Orange White | Pumpkin soup - images from a popular children's book |
| White Red | Bandage - with bood soaking through it | Red White | Santa suit |
Corner Solving
The Y-Perm swaps the Upper-Back-Left corner, our buffer piece, with the Upper-Front-Right corner (with the side effect of swapping the Upper-Back and Upper-Left edges).
[TODO: image]
The J-Perms can also be used to swap the Upper-Front-Left or Upper-Back-Right corners with the buffer piece (with the exact same edge-swap side effect). These J-Perms are rotated with respect to my usual J-Perm executions but that just requires a U move to setup and undo.
[TODO: image]
Just like with the edge solving, we can use setup moves that don't disturb the buffer area pieces to swap any pair of corner "stickers" and thus solve each corner piece.
There are only 8 corners, each with 3 orientations, so that's 24 possible algorithms each made up from simple intuitive building blocks.