u/Cutelittlebabybears

BLE stands for Brooks Last Edge, and it's an OLS subset that solves OCLL when you have the corner solved, which happens surprisingly often. It's also one of the most underrated OLS subsets imo; I'd put it right up there with WV as a set of algs most cubers should know at least a handful of.

It has a couple nice advantages. First of all, recognition is easy for once. Typically with OLS, there's a trade-off where it takes longer to recognize than LS+OLL, and it often leads to double recognition. But here, it's just like OCLL, which is easy to recognize with 2 sides from any angle.

Furthermore, it's fairly straightforward to do BLE into any slot. Although some algs are shown with a rotation, you can just do a wide u move setup into the alg, kinda like an AUF. Though I guess in this case it's more like ... "AES"? Consequently, a few of these cases have AES tricks that can be good to know:

For the F M' U R U' r' U R U' R' F' pi case, you can also do R U R' U2' R U R' U' R U2' R' into the front-right slot. It's surprisingly hard to avoid overworking fingers, but I like to push the U' with my right middle.

A couple of the sune cases have alternatives that are just inverted antisune cases, and vice-versa.

The case where all corners are oriented can be done from anywhere, and it's always a move-optimal commutator with RUS moves if the slot is on the right, and RUE moves if it's on the left.

This is actually something I've been working on in the background for over 2 years now: an optimized list of CFOP algs based directly on ergonomic theory, rather than popularity or personal preference. I actually posted these alg lists to an alt account, u/cfop-algs. It has algs for F2L, OLL, PLL, COLL, OLLCP, WV, and VLS, and I'm still continuing to find further improvements. I've provided some extra details there, and I'd be glad to elaborate on my logic for any particular alg if you're interested. There are some really interesting nuances at play.

So, how does it work? Well, there are 6 key principles that determine how fast an alg is mechanically:

Movecount: It's just how long the alg is. There are multiple metrics, the most important ones being ETM and QTM.

Moveset: This describes the individual quality of each fingertrick, like how pointer flicks are generally better than middle flicks. This also applies to wrist turns.

Regrips: Whenever you need to stop turning the cube to reposition your hand, that loses time.

Reloads: If you flick with the same finger twice in quick succession, you'll usually need to reset its position before the second flick.

Resistance: The more fingers you have contacting a layer you need to flick, the more friction there is, slowing it down slightly.

Meshing: If you have a wrist turn followed by a flick turn of the opposite chirality, or vice versa, you can sharply corner-cut for a higher turn speed.

Most people are aware of the 1st, 3rd, and 4th factors, and also implicitly consider the 2nd. But I never see the last 2 get brought up, even though they can often make a significant difference. All of my decisions for what algs to include are based on these 6 principles.

I hope you like the resource, and let me know where your main algs diverge from the algs shown. I know mine do in a lot of ways. And happy 1 year anniversary of this sub! We're so close to 1000 members, too. 🥳

The Best BLE Algorithms

I made a CFOP algorithm resource!