For those who can't watch the video for some reason/want an explanation in text of these tips: Tip #1: You can cancel into equator flip (if you don't know what that is then do /6,0/6,0/ on a solved sq1) by simply knowing what the very last moves of each alg are, so once you're comfortable with recognizing a flip case, you can try experimenting by finding good fingertricks to cancel into them. You can even cancel into equator flip on the D layer (if your last move of EP is a slice but it would leave the equator flipped, you can do 0,6/0,6/ to solve the whole thing instead) Tip #2: Since pretty much all EO algs don't affect corner permutation, you can recognize which CP case you're going to get during EO. Worth it for most cases except like the 2 slice one. This is to have a nice transition between the two steps. An example of a common alg used for a case that doesn't preserve CP is opposite on top and adjacent on bottom, but even then you can still have a general idea of what CP you're gonna get. Tip #3: Know how to execute easy cubeshape cases from different angles. This is especially useful since there are a lot of cases that are like 1 or 2 slices away into being reduced into something easy, but since you can only do it from one angle it makes the extra U/D layer misalignments before executing the alg from your normal angle tedious. You can try experimenting with this on your own as most of them are pretty much self-explanatory. A common case which most beginners can only do from one angle is scallop-kite, which you can do from the back (a U2 and D2 away from the standard position) with /1,2/3,0/. Tip #4: By this point you should know that sometimes you'll end up with the wrong colour on top during your solve, and if you didn't know this following tip then I'm assuming that when this happens, you normally just do something like /6,6/ at the very end of your solve. However, you can cancel some moves during CO to prevent this from happening. A basic example of this is when doing a slice for CO would end up with the opposite colours on both layers, instead do 6,6/ so you don't have to worry about slipping the layers later. If you get a CO skip though, you can also use this cancelling trick during EO by doing the pair of 6s as I mentioned above right before the last few moves of the alg. Tip #5: Most common resources online for sq1 algs in general (most notably EP algs, referring to Sarah Strong's site) are either outdated or straight up awful. [click the links in the description of this vid to find good algs] Tip #6: This is something really useful for EP, as that step definitely takes up a lot of time for the average solver. If you've ever thought if there's a simple way to force good EPs (since most cases are really bad for beginners), there is. Take essentially any CP alg and experiment by 'offsetting' either one or both layers by either a 1,0 for the top or a 0,-1 for the bottom and as you can see, different results are produced each time. The way this helps is that you can recognize certain blocks around the cube before CP and you can offset as many layers as you want according to the type of EP case you'd like to end up with, as something like U/U is way better than W/O. Take the CP case J on top as an example; just doing it normally on a solved cube would give you a Jb perm, but offsetting the U layer by one gives a Ja perm. Now to put this into perspective, let's say you have a G perm on top that would break up all the blocks if you didn't offset the layer, but if you had done so, you would end up with a U perm (since you didn't break up the block), which is objectively a better case. It will definitely help in the long run if you can execute all CP cases with all possible offsets all at a similar speed. Tip #7: Adding onto tip #6, there are many EP cases which beginners tend to do really inefficiently and can be done a lot quicker if you both know the basic EP algs and if you experiment a lot with several bad cases. The first example Eva shows here is W/Opp (oh and btw, if you don't know all the names for each EP then you should look it up on Sarah's site or something). The intuitive approach to solve this would be to do Opp/Opp, then end up with a U perm on top. The better way to handle this case is by doing Adj/Adj such that you would end up with a U/U afterwards. Since both adj/adj and U/U are a lot better than doing opp/opp into U on top (better algs), this is an ideal alternative. The next few examples she shows are for O/Adj where you should do adj/adj from a different D layer angle to get a U/U instead of U on top (again, better alg), and also for H/U where you should do adj/adj into W/adj (btw learn that alg, it's really fast and goes like this: (1,0) / (3,0) / (-1,-1) / (3,0) / (-3,0) / (1,1) / (-3,0) / ). Tip #8: Another cancellation technique, although this time it's an equator flip during CP. To demonstrate, if you have the case no swap/adj, you would normally do /3,0/-3,0/3,0/-3,0/. That alg flips the equator though, so in order to not have to deal with that during EP, when the equator is solved before CP, use the slightly modified alg /3,0/-3,0/3,0/3,0/6,0/. The same can be done with any other CP alg, even those that don't flip the equator when doing the standard alg (in that case you would only do the modified version if you have a flip, contrary to the example I showed). Tip #9: Alright this is getting into the real shit right here. Predicting your CO during cubeshape seems complicated and all, but it really isn't, especially for the easier, more predictable cases such as shield-square. Once you know how to 'trace' these simple cases by seeing where the corners will end up (this is actually similar to predicting your OLL on 2x2), you can start branching out to ones that require more slices to solve. As I mentioned many times before, experimentation is key to improving at sq1, so make sure to do that a lot. One-looking CS + CO wasn't as bad as you thought, right? :P Tip #10: Again this is slightly more advanced, remember when I said during tip #6 that you should always try to offset certain layers to force better EPs? Well, there are some nasty parity cases where it's actually not the best idea to offset, even if it may look like it. This is hard to explain in text but basically you should continue to experiment with your preferred way of handling different cases. Believe it or not, leaving yourself with mostly U perms solve after solve isn't always the best, because cases like O/opp are better than different direction U/U. As you may have already guessed, in order to pull off this tip effectively you need to be good at recognizing both layer's cases quickly to see which combination of PLLs are different than others. If you feel like getting used to a completely different recognition approach for CP isn't worth the extra saved tenths of a second or so, then this tip isn't for you. Tips #11 and 12: These are some pretty specific and advanced tips. The descriptions are "Predicting EPs and EP positions" and "Forcing the good double U-perms". Nothing really to explain here as it's pretty obvious as to what they mean, you pretty much have to watch the video to see a few examples. I can still say, however, to not undermine the importance of experimentation. Tip #13: This one is pretty cool, it's essentially doing 2 common CP algs to solve the entirety of PBL. In order to do this you need to have some sort of intuitive 'mindmap' to know which combo of which algs you need to do for certain PBL cases. The easiest cases are the ones where you only need to do a combo of two J/J algs (with offsets and AUF/ADFs in the middle). For example, if you have A/T as your PBL, you can hold both CP bars on the left , offset the U layer by one, and do J/J followed by a 2,-3 AUF/ADF, an offset by one on the D layer, and do J/J again. Tip #14: If you've ever been highly annoyed at EP cases where you need to do an AUF/ADF before a certain alg, you should definitely learn alternate algs for different cases. There are two different adj/adj algs both from vastly different angles which is very beneficial to know, especially considering it's an extremely common way to approach EP. Also related is learning different flip/non-flip algs for the more common EPs to save anywhere from .5 - 1 second off your solve. Tip #15: This is just learning the algs for easy PBLs. The links in the description have them. Tip #16: Since the N on top/bottom CPs are really bad and can sometimes even result in terrible EPs should you do them normally, there is a way to take advantage of them by doing combos of J/Js (similarly to tip #13) to end up with, say, a nice adj/adj. At first glance this may seem difficult to recognize and/or seem too advanced considering it's doing three algs to solve PBL, but this is actually one of the more easy and worthwhile tips to know. Watch the examples shown in the video if this interests you. Tip #17: Sometimes if you do EP before CP you can force an easy CP that would skip EP after doing the alg (essentially this is a branch of PBL). This is especially prominent with cases where you can do adj/adj before doing the CP alg. This works because if you do the CP normally, you won't always end up with the same, easy EP you would have gotten if you did it before CP. Tip #18: Learn CSP to never have to be forced to learn parity EP algs again. Oh boy that was long. Spent well over two whole hours typing this, so please like/reply for visibility.
N-J without flip : /-3/-3/3/-3/-3/ By memory, might not work Avoiding opp adj and mirror is hard tho. Have you ever tried learning what your CSP algs do to CO to help the transition ?
So I am a new sq1 solver, and I am interested in getting faster. Which EP algorithms should I learn first? I don’t think that even you know every single EP case. It would help me out if you told me how to learn them, and then link me to your favorite EP website! Thanks so much!
I recommend you guys use Lin Method for square-1 if you get struggled. The methods basically had the same thing like Roux Method. But it's your choice just giving away idea
T/T is just opp opp to pJ/pJ. Can you do a more in depth video on forcing good double U perms please? With good PBL I'm sub 9 whereas with my normal PBL I'm sub 10
Oh yeah that's pretty good too... I made an informal video talking about it that I'm not going to publish, I'll share it with you if no one else expresses interest
i wanted to learn cube shape but i realized that csp is better. i get the traacing concept i can do it in around 20 seconds after a week of learning and i know around 5 cases should i stop and learn optimal cube shape or continue (i average around 40 seconds)
Hehe with these new tricks I can finally steal the comletely irrelevant square one Missouri state records from the one and only Dr Theed But after I get home my cubicle volt is sitting in my mailbox I'm in Italy for spring break
every single square-1 site has the bottom side mirrored and its hard to learn algs for me, only sarah strong's website gets it right, not even algdb. ive been trying to learn csp from zlv but even that has the bottom side mirrored :(
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