ok if you asked me 2 months ago if I wanted to get a big olympic cube I would have said no. but now I know how to do really large cubes. today I just did my first 11x11x11.

anyone else love to do big cubes?

That's awesome!

Just this weekend I figured out the 5x5x5 myself. I'm really liking big cubes a lot and it's nice that a lot of it can be figured out intuitively once you know the basic concepts.

Do you know if you can actually buy anything beyond 5x anywhere? I assume you used a simulator.

I really love big cubes. I've been doing a bunch of 10x10x10 solves recently, and I'm going to do a 20x20x20 at some point.

gabbasoft is the best




the hardest part for me is starting because it's so hard to line the peices up once the cubes get really big.

I have a video of the last 23 minutes of the 11x11x11 solve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZlR_ZZRan0

I love bigcubes myself for three reasons,

1. With all those pieces, there can be more variance in solving styles.

2. There is still room for vast improvement on speedsolving times (not doing well there myself right now)

3. Patterns can be more complex.

However, I hate using the simulators, I spend at least half of my solve time trying to tell the computer I want to move this slice this way. It almost always goes the wrong way first. (Say I want to do an f turn on a 5x5x5, the simulator does an R,r,m,l,or L depending which cubie i'm using.)

I think I'm just going to have to sit back and wait for 6and above, until then, I'm going to practice my 5x5x5.

Nice video...that looks really overwhelming. But you gave me some ideas for solving my 5x5x5 more efficiently so thanks =D

Was that A7X in the background?

It's OK. It could be improved, especially in the turn speed (if you try to make turns too quickly you end up turning the whole cube). I prefer mine, in fact.



I've never had that problem with my simulator. If you drag the right pieces (if you want an f turn you have to drag a piece on the R or U face) it will do what you want it to.

For any simulator, though, once you learn how to use that simulator's interface, you have a much lower error rate. Play with it at slow speeds with a solved cube and try to see what you have to do to get a certain turn, and then after some practice with that it will work when you're going quickly.

yeah.

I use comutators to get the centers done. it takes forever but it's simple and it works.

I use commutators too (for the really big cubes), but it's pretty fast for me. I sometimes do commutators with blocks of centers too, because that can save a lot of time. For example, at the start, if there aren't a lot of white centers on the white face but there are a lot of them somewhere else, you can just bring an entire block of centers over, and then more white centers will be on the white face.

Also, if you're using commutators on the centers, you can just do them last. It makes the edges a lot faster if you don't have to worry about messing up centers.

I should try that but I'd like to do one center face first to save moves.

also what sim do you use.

I use my own simulator, IsoCubeSim.

You can find it at http://www.mzrg.com/java/IsoCubeSim/index.shtml.

awsome video man. I learned alot from watching that.

i'm trying to do the 5x5 by myself but i cant solve the 1st two oppisite centers. Any tips?

For the first time I can give advice. I figured out a 5x5x5 just a few day ago. This is how I do it. Please note that in my description, a "corner" piece refers to the corner piece within the center square and a middle piece is the middle piece between two corners. It has nothing to do with the main 5x5x5 corners.

For the opposite centers what I do is just pick a color. Now the aim is to build one bottom/top strip on one side. Sometimes it will already be done and sometimes 2/3 of the pieces will be done. We'll assume there's nothing.

First pick a center piece of the 3 piece strip. Put it in a center row on the side you are looking at. Now look at the opposite site and rotate a corner piece to the top left or right corner. Now when you turn the top two layers, this corner piece should line up with the center you placed previously on the other side. If it doesn't, flip the corner back to the original face and then rotate that face so that the corner is now on the opposite side. This time when you rotate the top two layers, it should match up with the center. You will eventually get faster at recognizing what side to twist.

Now flip the center-corner pair to the opposite side. In other words, preform F2. Now on the opposite side, orient the corresponding corner piece into position so when the top two layers of the cube are flipped they match up. Move the finished bottom strip to the bottom.

The next thing to do is to find the pieces of the middle strip and create it on the other side of the cube (opposite the side that the completed bottom strip is on). When you finish it, you can send it over to the other side, flip it out of the way, and then restore the centers.

The last strip can be completed the same way as the first.

This was really hard to describe so I apologize. I'd make a video if I had a camera. But really, it's not that hard once you understand how to make the first strip. It's the same idea of strip building the centers (assuming you did this for the others). Feel free to ask me to clarify if you need it.

to put corners in sometimes I use antisune. try (Rr)U2(Rr)'U'(Rr)U'(Rr)'

that swaps the center corner on the upper right of the front face with the one one the back left on the U face.

if you're not going to figure everything out yourself, then i recommend mine and franks website at bigcubes.com, i've been told the descriptions are very well written and thorough.

I agree with rxdeath, bigcubes.com is a very good site for those learning the reduction method. It has a lot of applets, but that shouldn't be much of a problem unless your computer is very slow.

For centers, it might be worth it to try stuff like r U' l' U r' U' l U and r U' m' U r' U' m U. Those should do a 3-cycle of centers (by the way, the m is a single slice turn).

yeah i'm actually endeavoring to make the site more computer friendly by using the imagecube script then upon clicking getting the actual applet, i never knew it was so much of a problem for other poeple until recently when someone brought it up...i have a pretty beefy computer so i've never noticed anything, but hopefully this will help everyone use it better, and drastically improve load times and freezing for users with less computer power to spare

I love big cubes! Bigcubes.com taught me how to do stuff, now I'm working on a 20x20!

Good luck on the 20x20x20.

I should make some kind of very-big-cubes tutorial, since I'm getting pretty good at them. There are really a lot of techniques for doing the simplest things.

Emile Compion (I think I just killed his last name) Has a tutorial on youtube, it is what taught me how to do the centers. He shows the work with a 7x7x7, but I've been able to apply his ideas to the 10 and 20.

Well, yeah, but I'm a bit faster than Emile (you got his last name right, by the way) at the big cubes, so I think I'd be able to share a lot of other time-saving techniques.

thats who I learned to do the centers.

You can also get some good results by watching the replays on the puzzlingaddiction.com applet. They show how the fast people really do the solve.

I've never really bothered with that web site, I'll have to add it to my "to do" list

My 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 came yesterday. I was thinking of getting tiles for them. are tiles worth paying 12$ to cover one 5x5x5 cube?

Why do you need $12 to cover one 5x5x5?

I think he meant inclduing shipping, maybe.

Yeah, it can be a pain getting stuff for cubes. I need to get stickers soon... But I also need to get a 5x5

I was looking on the mefferts website. It says they are made for the mini 5x5x5.

http://sites.webec.com.hk/meffert/index ... &pageid=64

if you have a better store please send a link

Cubesmith sells universal 5x5 tiles, I haven't checked recently but if I remember correctly it's $6, or $7 with shipping if you dont order anything else.

But cubesmith has been having a lot of complaints lately. There is a chance you will get your order, but there is also a chance it will go missing for a few months...

From what i've heard tiles make the cube too slippery and add unwanted weight to it. I had a thread on this a while back but didnt get many responses

They do make it more slippery (esp the textured tiles) but added weight? I can't really tell any difference in my cube. It's not like puzzles are that heavy to begin with....


I have non textured tiles on my 4x4, and they rock. They only take a bit of time to get used to.

cool, i think i'm going to go get some tile and hope cubesmith works from mea 2nd time, but lets leave him out of this.

no, if you really wnat info from them, then e-mail them. Stop bringing up things that are off topic and bringing up old threads.

Stop being lazy, search the forums, there have been multiple threads about it. By the way, DON'T post in any of them. Dead threads are annoying when they are brought back up...

Anywho, I just ordered some stickers from cubesmith (not for big cube tho, my 4x4 tiles are still good) so hopefully they will work.

I really need to get back to work on the 20x20, I've been being lazy with it