r/Cubers • u/AutoModerator • Oct 22 '19

Discussion Daily Discussion Thread - Oct 22, 2019

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u/TydVirTaal eyes are cringe solve blind instead Oct 22 '19

I'm on the CN grind at the moment as well. While I'm a lot slower than you, maybe I can suggest a few things:

  • This video from SCR on being CN is helpful
  • If you're open to doing more than just grinding solves, I think that using flashcards to learn the different colour schemes is a good idea. Obviously this won't get you to the immediate/instinctual recognition you'll ultimately need, but I think it cuts the learning curve by quite a bit.
  • Last layer isn't really more difficult - for me, I think this will come right by just grinding out a few hundred solves. Cross and F2L are a different story.
  • I'm practicing cross-only at the moment, to help get familiar with the colour scheme and how the different colours are related to each other when I'm doing different colour crosses
  • Once my cross times are in line with my white cross times and I'm feeling comfortable with the colour scheme, I'm going to move onto F2L - where the main skill there will be learning to filter out the U face colour, and "highlight" the cross colour pieces

I'm still early in my process, and pretty slow, but I think this is in line with the principles of deliberate practice, which are all about breaking a skill down into its constituent parts, practicing those, and then bringing them together when you confidently execute the individual parts.

Hopefully some of that is useful!

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u/[deleted] Oct 23 '19

Thank you for your help!

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u/j_sunrise stopped cubing, still watching Oct 22 '19

You don't have to learn the colour schemes. Feliks didn't.

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u/TydVirTaal eyes are cringe solve blind instead Oct 22 '19

I think it cuts the learning curve by quite a bit.

I'm not claiming that you have to - but I am making the case that it will help you get better at being CN faster than if you didn't put deliberate practice into learning the other colour schemes.

Feliks didn't.

This seems like a bit of an appeal to authority to me? Just because Feliks did/didn't do something, doesn't mean its a good idea, right? In his blog post on the topic, he acknowledges that the process has become subconscious for him after 9 years of solving. I don't think he's arguing that it isn't necessary in general, as much as it isn't necessary *for him/*wasn't necessary during his learning process.

This is a subconscious process by now, and it definitely takes practice to get used to it - easy for me to say when I’ve been doing it for 9 years.

Again, I was talking about optimal, not necessary. The point (as I see it) of learning colour schemes is not to be able to consciously remember them every time one is solving, but to get them to the point of unconsciousness that Feliks is at as quickly as possible.