Hello, PeelingStickers here

[PeelingStickers]

Hello people of the speedcubing world!

I've been solving the rubiks cube for almost a month now and as I'm sure many of you are too (or else why would you be here) I've become obsessed with it

I hit a new PB yesterday of 28.81 (my first sub-30!) and a nice average of 38 seconds on a zhanchi and I wanted to know of any advice you could share to a n00bie like me :P

The general breakdown of my times are:

Cross: 4-8 seconds depending on scramble. I solve the cross upside-down and intuitively, ofc. But sometimes I can get lost hunting for the fourth edge which can cost me a couple seconds.

F2L: 15-20 seconds. Recently I am improving my F2L, I've tried various practices from a metronome to just solving the F2L over and over again. I'm not intending to learn the algs for it for some time yet, as they are others that I'm learning at the moment. Any tips on improving my F2L time is greatly appreciated, for I do struggle with lookahead and such.

OLL: 6-10 seconds depending on the algorithm and luck etc. I use two look OLL, I'm fairly fast at executing these but others such as headlights are very tricky to get my fingers to move fast enough and solve it compared to others. The other day I was idly looking at 1 look OLL and thus, I can solve the "T" in one move xD. Generally though I don't think I'll be learning 1 look for a while.

PLL: 6-10 seconds. I'm still learning these. I've currently learnt 15 cases with still the G perms and the N Perms to fully learn and get into my mind. If I'm being honest though, my muscle memory has only truly stored about 10 of these which I can quickly execute. For the six I don't know I use the beginners method permutation, which takes time, but is practically like 2-look PLL anyway so doesn't greatly affect my time. I'd be happier to be able to perform these faster though, particularly M-slices and such.


And that's about it really, I enjoy other activities outside cubing (ofc) such as karate, snooker (I used to be good but getting down to practice is very tough nowadays xD) and reading. Not to mention school and exams :/

Any tips to help me gratly appreciated, along with good videos to watch and learn (I've seen most of badmephisto's tutorials, and printed off his alg sheets, great tutor and videos).

Ta, see you around,

Ben

[kirtpro]

cool, welcome to speedsolving

basic things that always help is lookahead, seeing what you're doing that could make you slow (eg pauses, rotations) and improve on those
good that you've got enthusiasm, you'll need it at times lol
practice is key, so just keep going and progress

good luck

[PandaCuber]

Hi

[drogg]

Hi Ben,

From my experience (I was at your stage around a month or so ago) I would just continue doing full solves and slowly learning full PLL. You will find your PLL recognition will get faster and faster as will your ability execute each PLL over a couple of weeks and it also allows you valuable time to get confident with your f2l. I didn't really bother touching on lookahead until I was much more confident at f2l (getting times including the cross of around the 17s mark) as I found it far too hard to look at the next pair while trying to insert the current one. Don't worry though it starts to come with time and practice.

Again your cross will come with some more solves. I wouldn't get weighed down trying to learn too much at once currently just focus on a couple of things for a few weeks and improve them. As I said in my opinion learning full PLL combined with shed loads of solves will soon have you sub 30 (average) without worrying about lookahead for the time being. Hope that helps a little. Oh and I bet that sub 30 single felt good, I know my first did!!

[sneaklyfox]

Welcome! Advice...
Cross: Plan the entire cross during inspection. Follow badmephisto's advice. Start by using as much time as you need. It will get easier over time. Practice solving it blindfolded.
F2L: No need to learn algs except maybe for some harder cases. Do the rest intuitively. When you get more used to it, practice pairing and inserting each slot blindfolded again.
OLL: Stick with 2-look for now. Full OLL is usually one of the last things to learn because there are 57 cases and F2L is a much bigger factor to getting faster.
PLL: Watch many videos to see some different algs performed. See if you can adopt fingertricks. Look up the algorithm database for something that suits your hands. Practice cases over and over.

Oh, and follow advice.

[Ickenicke]

Welcome!