Demonstrating Full PLL

There's more than one way to solve a Rubik's cube, but typically, with the Beginner's Method, you follow these steps:

(first layer)
1. solve the edges (cross)
2. solve the corners

(middle layer)
3. solve the edges

(last layer)
4. orient the edges (cross)
5. orient the corners (face)
6. permute the corners
7. permute the edges

You can solve the first layer intuitively (without memorization) pretty easily, but there are also some simple tricks you can learn (e.g., daisy method, corner shimmy) if you don't want to use your brain. The middle layer requires learning two algorithms that are very similar (just mirrored), and will need to be applied multiple times. The last layer can be solved in four steps, requiring the memorization of 5 algorithms of varying difficulty, that may need to be applied more than once in any given solve. So, you can solve a Rubik's cube - every single time, no matter the scramble - only needing to memorize as little as 7 or 8 algorithms (2 of which are just mirrored versions of others).

It's neither the flashiest nor the most efficient way to solve the puzzle, but it's one of the easiest to learn. More difficult methods typically require you to memorize more algorithms to solve individual cases in a more tailored fashion, with less repetition. Beginner's CFOP, which I learned last fall, reduces your solve from seven to six steps, only one of which requires any repetition at all (and not even every time). After solving the cross, you can solve the first two layers (F2L) simultaneously, by pairing edges with corners. This can be done intuitively, once you learn the patterns. The last layer still requires four steps, but by learning 14 algorithms (plus one that is only a minor variation of another one), you can solve it every time by executing only 4 of those algorithms.

The advantage of Advanced CFOP is that it reduces the last layer from 4 down to 2 steps (orientation of the last layer, or OLL, followed by permutation of the last layer, or PLL), so that for every given scramble, assuming you're solving the first two layers intuitively*, the cube can be solved with the execution of only two algorithms! You can see why it's so much faster. The downside is that in order to do this, you have to commit 78 different algorithms to memory (57 for OLL, 21 for PLL) - although this includes the 14 you already learned. Yeah, it's a lot. Is it worth it? If you're a casual cuber, then almost certainly not. But if you want to be in the big leagues, it's mandatory. Besides, if you enjoy cubing, and practice every day, it gives you something new to learn. Just think of the feeling of mastery it will impart once you're done.

I've got a long way yet to completing Advanced CFOP. But I just reached a notable milestone - I have committed each of the 21 algorithms required for full PLL to memory. I bought a bulk order of 20 speedcubes to celebrate, so I could demonstrate my progress!



*I've been doing advanced intuitive F2L for so long I apparently forgot what the beginner's version was like. In F2L, you're looking for a first layer corner and a middle layer edge with matching colors, so you can pair them up and then slot them where they belong (repeating the process until all four corner-edge pairs are solved).

In the beginner's version, you first put the matching corner and edge in the top layer, and then pair them up according to one of just three variations. The advanced version streamlines the process (again, by learning more cases) by learning how to most efficiently match each pair even when they're not both in the top layer. I think there's about thirty different cases to learn (including all the mirrors). It was rough going at first, but I laid them all out in my head (with the help of diagrams I made on my computer), and practiced, practiced, practiced until I was able to remember how to solve each case without looking it up.

This is still the slowest part of any solve for me (which is typical among speedcubers, from what I can tell), because it takes time to hunt for the pieces all over the cube. That's why I'm practicing look-ahead, where instead of looking at what you're doing, you rely on muscle memory and focus on figuring out what you're going to do next, to reduce time wasted on the recognition phase.

Girl Friends

I can't say whether I would have been a good parent (although I know I wouldn't have been the worst one out there, from what I've seen). I have a kind of passive personality that may be a liability, although I know from anecdote and my own limited personal experience that taking care of a kid has a way of pushing you to do what needs to be done, because it's for their sake, and not yours. Indeed, this may have been the only thing that could have cured me of my condition of always being stuck inside my head and doubting myself. As my dad might remember from a disagreement we had when I was a teenager (then again, he might not), I subscribe to the philosophy that (within reasonable limits - I'm not a parental anarchist, either), while not being equals, adults should be friends with children, not just resented dictators. Maybe that makes me a better uncle or grandparent than a parent, but I do have a natural instinct to nurture and protect kids - not because I see them as innocent and vulnerable (although they often are; other times they are less so than we expect), but because I respect them and admire them for the people they are, and I want them to get the most from life (which is more than I let myself have, due to no fault whatsoever of my own parents).

Due to my social isolation, I was never faced with a serious opportunity to have children (despite a brief and uncharacteristic period of self-delusion around the time I graduated from high school), and I justified that fact by convincing myself I didn't want to have kids. Realistically, I didn't think I would have been capable of raising a child, as I've been barely capable of navigating society myself. I also have grave concerns about poisoning another generation with the significant mental health defects that have prevented me from having a fuller life. But from my perspective as I enter middle age, having had the unpredicted opportunity to watch other people's kids grow up, from babes in diapers to now starting to have kids of their own, getting to know them and spend time with them (despite how genuinely difficult they can sometimes be - like, I want to rent the well-mannered kids you see on TV and in movies, the kind who are perpetual "treasures" you never get tired of, and not the absolutely exhausting terrors they can be [seriously, it's a weird combination of feeling elated shooing them out the door at the end of the weekend, but then still recognizing how empty your life is until you see them again]). But despite all that, from my perspective now, there is a part of me that regrets - not my choices, but - the circumstances of fate that never gave me the opportunity to have kids of my own (as opposed to ones I have very little influence over shaping the habits and routines and beliefs of).

One thing I do know for sure is that there is a significant hole in my heart (although this may be the cart leading the horse, given that my feelings haven't changed since I was a schoolboy myself) from all the opportunities I missed out on in my own childhod, due to my well-hidden and therefore untreated mental illness and social isolation. And I know that being friends with girls (in particular; call me sexist, but girls just fascinate me endlessly) - as I am able to do now that I couldn't in the past (and being friends doesn't just mean spending time with them, but being a person they want to spend time with) - fills me with a warm and fuzzy feeling like nothing else can. I just lament that my own ongoing mental health issues (I've always had crippling anxiety, but my OCD manifests more strongly in the presence of other people, since it's easier to control your environment when you don't add the unknown variable that is other human beings; yet, my curse is that while escaping people is consistently a relief, I can never truly be content, in the long run, as long as I am alone) continue to get in the way of doing more of the things (that is, spending time with people) that make me feel like my existence wasn't a cosmic mistake after all.

I don't know what more there is to say about any of that. I just wanted to get it off my chest. Because the unexamined life is not worth living. And someday I will die, and all my ego concerns will be rendered powerless, but maybe my tendency to analyze and ability to articulate my own feelings will help somebody someday to learn a little more about what makes humans tick, so that in the long run, love and peace and progressivism will win out over fear and superstition, and we'll be able to make more people more happy in more ways, over all. Because why else are we here? The universe doesn't care about us and would just as soon let us suffer. Why shouldn't we put all of our energy into spiting its apathy and bettering our own condition? There's no God out there watching over us - that much is clearly self-evident (and to claim otherwise is not just ignorant but extremely offensive). We have to make our own destiny, because there's no one out there to do it for us.