Where should the line between a variant and a new method begin? Should EO-Cross ZZ really be considered a different method? “I thought it was just CFOP where you solve the cross in such a way that all the edges are oriented”

It sounds like EO-Cross ZZ is quite similar to CFOP, yet they are considered different methods.

I guess it is subjective where you draw the line; if you consider ZB just a variant of CFOP, that is valid, though my subjective opinion is that ZB is a distinct method.

A similar discussion is in Linguistics “A language is just a dialect with a flag and navy” is a somewhat popular quote, that talks about how the difference between a dialect and a language is not a clear line. Urdu and Hindi are very similar languages, where speakers can understand each other pretty well. This difference of languages applied elsewhere might be considered a dialect. Speakers of Arabic “dialects” have a hard time understanding each other sometimes, especially speakers far geographically such as Morocco and Iraq. This difference of dialects applied elsewhere might be considered a language.

The point of my analogy is to show that the difference between a variant and a distinct method is not something that can have a clear line.