My Blindfolded Cubing History
I first learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube (with my eyes open) in April 2004. I didn't go to my first competition until over a year later when I went to the Horace Mann 2005 competition on May 28, 2005. It was there that I first saw someone solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded. Only two competitors competed in the event -- Shotaro Makisumi and Chris Hardwick, both of whom have held blindfolded WRs at one point or another. After that competition, I was inspired to learn how to solve a cube blindfolded.
Ninth grade soon ended and it was summer vacation. Thinking back, I can't remember actually doing any camps that summer. I didn't go to Newark Academy as I did the following summer, and I hadn't started working at Staples (that would start in the summer of 2007 after my junior year) or volunteering at Morristown Memorial Hospital (that would start in summer 2006 after my sophomore year), yet. I did have WPMB band camp that summer, but that wasn't until the last two weeks of the summer before school started.
Anyways, I think I had a lot of free time. One afternoon, I decided to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded. I searched on Google and found Tyson Mao's blindfolded guide on his Caltech webpage (it no longer exists, since he graduated, but I've uploaded a copy onto my site). Surprisingly, he hadn't yet officially competed in the blindfolded event yet when he wrote the guide. However, he would go on to break the blindfolded WR later that year in September 2005 at the Northern California 2005 competition.
The tutorial was 10 pages long, but I already knew how to solve a cube with my eyes open and was familiar with cube notation, so the learning went quickly. The method it taught was what is now called 3OP, which stands for 3-cycle orientation permutation. The O and P parts of the name come from the fact that the method is broken up into two phases -- orienting all the pieces and permuting all the pieces. The idea is that first you orient all the pieces in such a way that when you permute them (rearrange them) into their proper locations, they will be solved (and not misoriented). The 3-cycle part of the name comes from the use of 3-cycle algorithms during the permutation phase.
The method has four steps: (1) edge orientation, (2) corner orientation, (3) corner permutation, and (4) edge permutation. This is the order I execute in (and I memorize in reverse order), but you can actually swap (1) and (2) and/or (3) and (4). It doesn't matter which type of pieces you orient first or permute first, as long as you do orientation before permutation.
My approach to learning the method was to understand how to do a step with my eyes open, then attempt to memorize just that one step and do it with my eyes closed. After learning all four steps individually in this manner, I then tried doing multiple steps at a time. After I felt comfortable with all the steps individually and had successfully done multiple steps at a time, I finally decided to attempt an entire blindfolded solve.
I wasn't timing myself, so I took lots of time to memorize and review my memorization, though I wasn't fully focused either. I had finished memorizing the cube, but the Tonight Show with Jay Leno had come on, which I wanted to watch, so I watched it and reviewed my memorization during the commercial breaks. After the show ended, I went downstairs to the playroom and actually attempted the solve. I was 100% confident about my memorization, since I had reviewed it so many times. But I was very nervous about my execution since blindfolded cubing was still new to me. I solved very slowly and carefully, and when I removed my blindfold, I held a solved cube in my hands! This, along with my first sub-20 second average (19.93, also done that summer on 6/27/05), was definitely one of my most memorable cubing moments.
Later that summer, I went to my second cubing competition ever -- Caltech Dallas 2005. My goal was to get my first official blindfolded success. My first attempt was a success -- 5:37.63 -- and so was my third -- 4:40.69. This competition, I also achieved another goal, which was to get my first official sub-20 second solve (which I had failed to achieve at Horace Mann 2005). Not only did I succeed in getting a sub-20 solve, I also got my first official sub-20 average (18.02)!
Over the next few years, my blindfolded times naturally dropped. At Rutgers Spring 2007, I achieved my first sub-3-minute solve (2:30.28), and since then, I've more or less been consistently between 2 and 3 minutes. My best official time and my only official sub-2-minute solve is 1:56.05, set at Princeton Fall 2010. My best unofficial time is 1:48.67, set on 5/27/07 using the same scramble as Chris Krueger's former WR of 1:15.60.
I didn't begin learning 4x4 blindfolded until the summer of 2009. This was after my freshman year of college, and that summer, I was doing a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Stevens Institute of Technology's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was a 10-week program with a stipend, and free housing was provided. I did research on software-defined radio using the open-source GNU Radio software and Universal Software Radio Peripherals (USRPs) as hardware. (Check out the song about our research and the write-up.) The program was very laid back, and I'd estimate that we spent an average of about 3 hours in the lab per day. I had ample free time to goof off and pursue other things. I played a lot of Mega Man that summer for sure. One of my research teammates, Thomas Bell, had a Sega Genesis for which he had downloaded an NES emulator, allowing us to play all the classic Mega Man games. I remember marathoning Mega Mans 1, 2, and 3 that summer.
With my free time, I also decided to learn 4x4 blindfolded. The central concept behind big cubes blindfolded is commutators. I had heard about these before from speedcubing mailing lists and forums and had tried understanding them several times, from tutorials such as Gilles Roux's. The core concept behind the commutator is X Y X' Y'. It's quite simple, really. But I didn't fully understand them until I started learning 4x4 blindfolded. I never really understood the restrictions on the X and Y parts of a commutator until I had to apply commutators to solving a 4x4 blindfolded.
I searched online for a 4x4 blindfolded tutorial and found Chris Hardwick's guide on the SpeedSolving.com forum. Following that guide, I finally mastered commutators and now had the tools needed to solve a 4x4 blindfolded.
I started with a single 4x4 scramble. I first wrote out all the cycles on paper and practiced executing commutators with my eyes open. When I could do this without mistakes, I then tried executing the commutators without looking at the cube but still looking at the cycles I had written out on paper.
There were a lot of kinks I figured out by continuously repeating the same scramble. Some of these kinks included:
- Not using supercube-safe algorithms. When you do an algorithm on a 3x3, sometimes the algorithm also changes the orientation of the center pieces. However, rotating center pieces doesn't matter unless the center piece has a logo or picture on it. The 4x4 equivalent of rotating a center piece on a 3x3 is cycling 4 center pieces, which might all be different colors. Algorithms that do this are NOT supercube-safe. Algorithms that do not rotate the center pieces ARE supercube-safe. You want to use supercube-safe algorithms for big cubes blindfolded because otherwise the center pieces might end up in different positions than what you memorized.
Instead of learning supercube-safe algorithms to replace some of the 3x3 algorithms I already knew, my solution to the problem was as follows. I decided to solve the centers first before solving any other pieces. After all the centers are solved, it doesn't matter if algorithms are supercube-safe or not because even if centers are rotated, since they are all of the same color, it doesn't affect my memorization.
Centers are solved using commutators, and commutators are always supercube-safe. Proof: Commutators are of the form X Y X' Y', where X' and Y' are the inverses of X and Y. Thus, whatever center rotations are caused by X and Y are canceled out by X' and Y'. Whew, that was kind of a long-winded explanation to supercube-safe algorithms.
- How to memorize. A 3x3 only has 20 pieces to memorize. A 4x4 has 56 pieces. That's more than twice the amount of information. Thus, I didn't think pure visual memorization was a good approach. I needed a more systematic approach. Thus, as many other blindfolded solvers do, I assigned a letter to each position on the cube, and I just memorized strings of letters. I didn't have a set word or image associated with each letter; instead, I just created words and sentences on the fly while memorizing.
As soon as I got my first 4x4 blindfolded success, I wanted to do it officially, in competition. I got my first chance a couple weeks later at the Big Cubes Summer 2009 competition, the only competition I've been to so far that did not include the 3x3 speedsolve event. It was also the only competition I've been to that occurred at someone's house, in this case Dan Cohen's backyard.
I memorized very slowly and carefully and executed very slowly and carefully as well. When I completed my execution, I thought I had executed perfectly. I had. But the cube was still unsolved. I had forgotten to memorize and account for two pieces in the back of the cube that needed to be swapped. I was very disappointed, and because I had taken so long on my first attempt, I was not allowed a second or third attempt.
Fortunately, I had another shot at getting my first official 4x4 blindfolded success the next weekend, at the Connecticut Summer 2009 competition. This time, I reviewed my memorization thoroughly and made sure I had accounted for all the pieces. My execution was again slow and careful, and my hands even sweated a bit while I solved. When I just had parity left at the end, I was very nervous and solved it very carefully, even though it was not a very difficult fix. This time, my solve was successful! I remember the audience clapping for me when I finished. This was another cubing highlight.
After getting that first official 4x4 blindfolded solve, I stopped practicing the event. I didn't attempt another 4x4 blindfolded solve until the next summer, when organizer Vincent Sheu said I could do 3 attempts at Berkeley Summer 2010. I did about 3 practice attempts in the week leading up to the competition, only succeeding on one of them. At the competition, I found a very generous cuber who agreed to judge all 3 attempts for me. This judging includes holding a screen between my eyes and the cube during my execution phase, which might be over ten minutes long. Despite being close each time, I DNF'd all three solves, usually off by only two pieces.
After that competition, I didn't practice again until Harvard Fall 2010, where organizer Amy Tai said I could compete in 4x4 blindfolded. I remember doing one practice solve the night before in William Chen's (a different William Chen from the WP one) dorm room where I was staying. I remember being pretty tired and doing my attempt while sitting on the floor and not being very hopeful about my chances of success. However, surprisingly, I succeeded and this gave me confidence as I went to sleep. The next day, at the competition, I also succeeded on my first 4x4 blindfolded attempt with a new official and unofficial PR of 16:40, shattering my previous official PR by 11 minutes and my unofficial PR by 5 and a half minutes. This new PR was very surprising to me as I had not been practicing this event at all.
Fast forward to the next summer, summer 2011. This summer, I was going to my first US Nationals competition, invited by Tyson Mao to join the staff team. Since I was spending quite a bit of money on airfare to fly from San Francisco out to The Ohio State University to compete, my goal was to place top 3 in some event. After analyzing the psych sheet, I decided I had the best chance at getting on the podium in feet cubing. After only three weeks of practice, I managed to place 3rd in the event.
At US Nationals, I also decided to compete in as many events as I could, even those events that I never practice. It's fun competing, and since I spent so much money traveling there, I figured I might as well compete as much as possible. One of the events I decided to participate in was 5x5 blindfolded, even though I had never attempted a solve beforehand, let alone had a success. I figured that 5x5 blindfolded used the same concepts -- commutators -- as 4x4 blindfolded, and there was no harm in trying. I thought I could figure out all the kinks to 5x5 blindfolded the night before the event. I remember that after the first day of competition, I went to a Tim Hortons, planning to figure out 5x5 blindfolded.
Instead of focusing, I goofed off and did things like post the above picture on Google+ (which I no longer use but was using while working on it last summer at Google). By the time I was ready to focus on 5x5 blindfolded, the restaurant was closing, so I went back to my hotel room, where I practiced at the desk. I didn't have time to do a full attempt, but I thought I had worked out all the kinks before I called it a night. The next day, I did my first 5x5 blindfolded attempt. When I removed my blindfold, the cube was a mess. I had less than half my time remaining, but I decided to try another attempt anyways. This time, I was more careful and thought I executed perfectly, but the cube was still a mess. I guess I hadn't really practiced 5x5 blindfolded enough or worked out all the kinks yet.
After the competition, I found out that only two competitors had made successful 5x5 blindfolded attempts. Everyone else DNF'd. That meant that if someone else had succeeded, even if it took him 2 hours, he'd still have gotten 3rd place in the event.
This year, US Nationals is looking even more competitive. I think I'm going to have a very tough time placing top 3 in feet because the North American record holder is coming, last year's feet winner is coming, and the 2010 and former North American record holder is also coming, in addition to three other people who have all recorded faster feet solves than me in competition. Thus, I think my best chance at a medal is in the 5x5 blindfolded event. Only 5 people registered have previously recorded successful solves, including the 2 people who had successes last year (Mike Hughey and Chester Lian). I think with some practice and luck, I might be able to snag 3rd place. In addition to increasing my chances of medaling at Nationals, another reason I want to compete in 5x5 blindfolded is that I want to have an official (non-DNF) result for all event categories. Right now, I have official results for all events except 5x5 blindfolded and Rubik's Clock. 5x5 blindfolded is definitely the harder of the two events to achieve an official (non-DNF) result for. Thus, this summer, after I graduated from college, I started learning 5x5 blindfolded earnestly.
I approached learning 5x5 blindfolded the same way as I did 4x4 blindfolded. I used one scramble over and over in order to figure out all the kinks. Despite knowing I needed to use supercube-safe algorithms (or solve the centers first before applying non-supercube-safe algorithms), I had many unsuccessful attempts due to using non-supercube-safe algorithms.
There are 92 pieces to memorize on a 5x5, so I decided I needed a more efficient memorization method than what I was using for the 4x4 (sentences created on the fly) and the 3x3 (3OP done by pure visual memorization). Creating sentences on the fly took too long and sometimes I confused different parts of different sentences. I searched online and decided to use letter pair images, as described on Chris Hardwick's site. The idea is to always memorize two letters at a time. Every two-letter combination has a fixed image associated with it. By practicing a lot, you get used to your images and memorization can go very quickly. There is a big initial overhead in learning this system, though, as you have to create on the order of 26^2 = 676 images for all the possible letter pair combinations. (Technically, not all letter pair combinations are possible, so the number's actually more like 625, but still a lot.) Rather than creating all the images at once, I made an Excel spreadsheet with all the letter-pair combinations and slowly filled it in. I would do a solve attempt and create images on the fly, and then after the attempt, I would fill in the spreadsheet with the letter-pair images I used. I've since completed the spreadsheet, which you can find here. As I do more solves, sometimes I change images when I think of better ones to use. Many of my images are people, like Chris Kuo (QO) and Mihir Jain (MH), or Wolverine (XW) and Dexter (DX). I also use Pokémon like Eevee (EV) and Omanyte (OM), StarCraft units like the overlord (OV) and battlecruiser (BC), candy like Twix (TW) and Kit Kat (KT), and profanities like fuck (FK) and shit (SH).
For the 3x3 pieces on a 5x5, naturally I use a 3x3 blindfolded method. However, I decided 3OP was inefficient for the 3x3 pieces on a 5x5 because it requires memorizing two items of information for each piece -- orientation AND permutation. Nowadays, most of the top 3x3 blindfolded cubers are using freestyle commutators, which solve orientation and permutation simultaneously. It requires fewer turns to solve and less memorization. However, memorization is a bit harder because you need to memorize the exact sticker location rather than just the cubie location. For learning freestyle commutators, I ended up using Brian Yu's tutorial for corners and Chris Hardwick's tutorial for edges.
With 92 pieces on a 5x5 to memorize, I also needed a more efficient method for storing what I memorized. Thus, I developed several memory palaces (actually, most of them are outdoor locations) for storing the letter-pair images that I was memorizing. My favorite memory palace is my house -- I start in the backyard, walk down the stairs to my driveway, walk down the driveway to the mailbox, walk along the sidewalk to my neighbor's driveway, walk up his driveway, cut across my lawn, and enter my front door. Along this journey, I have 21 locations at which I can store images. At each location, I store all the letter-pair images associated with one complete cycle.
I ended up learning and developing a lot more tools than I expected in order to solve a 5x5 blindfolded. I didn't need to do all this -- I could've just memorized visually and used 3OP and created sentences on the fly -- but I thought that learning all this would benefit me in the long run, so I decided to invest the time now in learning these tools. All this learning took over a month. Finally, I was ready to do full 5x5 blindfolded attempts. My first few attempts were still pretty far off, but I learned from my mistakes and figured out some more kinks. Gradually, my attempts got better and better, with fewer mistakes. Finally, on 6/29/12, the day before I left for China/Taiwan, I got my first success with a total time of 51 minutes, 41 seconds. To illustrate some of the concepts I described in the above, here is a detailed breakdown of my first ever success:
The scramble (hold your cube with yellow on top, green in front) was: F R B2 U d2 b2 R2 l' b l2 L u l' f R L2 d2 D' B2 u b2 f2 l' F2 f U' f' L2 b U' u B' d L d2 r' u' l r2 u2 b F' d' u' f' b' R2 u' B2 D2 f l' L2 u' B F f2 d2 f B. I used my home as my memory palace. I memorized and solved in this order: + centers, x centers, wings, orientation parity, 3x3 edges, corners. My images for each step were:
- + centers: (A E Q U N) (B J) (C O F V K R) (D L S P W G T) (H X)
(Apple EQuestrian United Nations) (Boy Jam) (cat OFf! ViKing Roar) (Door LaSsie PaW GoaT) (Hat Xray) - x centers: (A Q) (B E M J U R V) (C L) (D G N S W H T)
(Apple Quilt) (Boy EM JUdo RV) (Cat Llama) (Door GuN SaW HaT) - wings: (A N U E V L T X F K) (B I W J G D P R Q H) (C O)
(Apple NUtella EeVee LighT (X)Fantasy Kite) (Boy Ice Water JoG DeeP RacQuet Hat) (Cat Oreo) - 3x3 edge orientation: UB and DF (memorized visually)
- 3x3 edges: (A X N P V D T J) (G K Q)
(Apple XelNaga PaVement Dark Templar Juice) (Goat KraKen) - corners: (A M H S F K W P)
(Apple MiHir SaFe CoWard Pea)
Since my first success, I've only gotten one more success, my current PR of 43 minutes, 25 seconds, set on 7/7/12. I hope to get a few more successes before my official attempts at Nationals, and I hope to get my first official success at Nats!
Blindfold cubing might sound complicated, but I assure you that if you take it step by step, it's fun, rewarding, and not that hard. Just like learning how to solve a cube, I am confident that anybody who wants to be able to solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded CAN solve a cube blindfolded. So, if you're interested in learning, check out Tyson Mao's blindfolded guide! For some inspiration (I was similarly inspired), check out this video by Dan Sarnelli.
| surya wrote: Brilliant and beautiful. Best of Luck :) | 4 Feb 15, 15:47 UTC |
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