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Cubing Progress
Last month I said I was starting to learn ZBLL algs and was also going to experiment with yau5. I’m still slowly learning more 2GLL, but I haven’t done a single 5x5 yau solve since that last post.
ZBLL and 2GLL
I lost a lot of wind after learning the T and U 2GLL sets. I know them all still (ok actually the ones with the H Perm in them still trip me up at the start, for both cases I use the inverse of the other one and it’s sorta tricky to remember how each one starts), and I can recognize and execute them all in about 2.5 seconds which is about half of what my OLL/PLL time would probably be. I consider these sets absolutely worth it to learn.
I started learning the L set next because I figured that’d be the closest to the T and U sets since it has 2 corners oriented. For whatever reason, it was nearly impossible for me to learn. Recognition was such a pain, I couldn’t remember where the twisted corner had to be when I did the algorithm and I’d end up doing the wrong algorithm about 1/3 times. The algorithms I was trying to learn weren’t totally sticking either. I could do the algs at probably 3 TPS but any faster and I’d end up messing it up, it was rough. I took about a week or 2 of a break and came back and just decided to learn the algs that were sune/sexy derivations. These algs aren’t horrible, so I don’t think it’s an issue that I learned them but I’m afraid all of the L sets are going to be like this. Now that I’m writing this blog post though I’m coming across this page which has a decent way of helping with recognition, and they use the sune algs for the L set, so maybe I’ll peruse this and it’ll help with the recognition.
The H set hasn’t been as bad so far. The recognition is a little tricky since you have to look at a little more than the other sets. This set is sorta similar to the diagonal cases where it’s all opposite colors on top instead of a solved corner permutation. In normal solves this one probably takes the longest for recognition because I have to go “ok, this one is the right set, now where’s the block” and then sometimes I go into “ok there is no block, is this the case that I know?”, and even rarer (but still common) I go “ok, no this isn’t actually the set I know, dang it”.
After I finish up H, which only has 8 algorithms in comparison to the 12 all the other sets have I think I’ll move onto the Pi cases. I’ve heard these are also known to be difficult and probably not worth it. The corner recognition is easy though because this is the permutation I use for my normal OLL alg for this case.
I haven’t decided if I want to learn the sune/antisune cases yet. I keep going back and forth on them. I’ll probably be faster using sune + PLL, but then I haven’t learned full ZBLL. Not really the best reasoning for using it, but if the algs turn out to be decently fast I may end up being faster with it anyway. I’ve never been super fast at executing algorithms, I’ve never been able to sub 1 anything. Even sune is like 1.1-1.5 seconds of execution for me. I’ll probably give the sune/antisune cases a try at least because their recognition shouldn’t be terrible, and then I’ll have at least all of 2GLL learned.
I think once I’m done with 2GLL I’m going to commit to learning all of either T or U next. This way I won’t have to be wondering if I’ve learned an alg or not, I’ll just be able to say “oh a T case, I for sure know this one”.
NCSU Wolfpack 2025
Happy to announce I signed up for a competition this morning. This one should be fun because it’s gonna be in Raleigh which is closer to me and it has 5x5. I haven’t done much 5x5 as of late because I’ve been focusing on 3x3, but for the next month or so I think I’m going to work on 5x5 hard in attempt to get a sub 1:10-1:07 average, and maybe get an official sub-1 single. I got another sub-1 single the other day, so I’m up to 2 singles now which is awesome.
It’s the end of the month already, I’ll try to make another post soon. I just get busy and neglect this writing lol, but I’ll try to block off an hour per week to do updates leading to the competition this time around.