[Unofficial] 3x3 34.32 ... I didn't realize how slow I turn until I took a video

This is a pretty average solve for me. My PB is 26.92.

I solve the cross on the top

I use intuitive F2L

I know probably 10 OLL cases, other than that I use 2-look OLL 1-Look PLL

And I have big old clumsy hands . Any tips?

Practice, Practice, Practice. It's the opposite for me, on my 5x5, my ten year old hands aren't big enough for the cube. Another idea is to get a bigger cube, if you want a custom one.

Don't do F/F' with your ring finger. It's pretty awkward and slow. Either just using your index finger is better, or getting used to using your thumb.

MTGjumper said:

Don't do F/F' with your ring finger. It's pretty awkward and slow. Either just using your index finger is better, or getting used to using your thumb.

Click to expand...

When watching, it really slows down your solve (like 1 second at least) when you do that. What I do is I turn the cube up a little bit so that the F face is now closer to being the U face. That way I can use my ring fingers and it is a lot easier to get used to that I think. I didn't start using finger tricks till I was around 25 seconds (lol) and I see that you are already using them which is good but I would just focus on sitting down with each algorithm and then just figuring out what is the best possible spot for your fingers. Also, just by doing U2 U2 U2.. etc a lot, or R U R' U' until you solve it again can really strengthen your fingers. Hope this helps

scramble (white on top, red on front): F2 L2 D F D2 L' B2 F2 L2 B2 R2 B' D2 R' F' B R' U2 B2 L' B2 L' U2 D B

U2 x' D' U x y U' R2 U' // Cross
x2 U' R U' R' U' L' U2' L B L' B' L // 1st pair
U2' R' U2 R L' U L // 2nd pair
U' U' R' U' R // 3rd pair
R U R' //4th pair
U F R U R' U' F' // EO
U' R U R' U R U2 R' // CO
U' L U2' L' U2' L F' L' U' L U L F L2' U // PLL

You should try to reduce the cuberotations during your cross. Maybe you could practise solving your cross on the bottom. You could also practise your look-ahead and reduce your pauses. And also, your F and F' moves looks a bit awkward. Try doing them with your index finger. Otherwise, just keep practising.

As always, practice your look ahead. Reducing pauses, short as they may be, will chop seconds. Also practice doing the cross on bottom. It may seem awkward at first, but it will feel all natural after a few solves. Try to plan as much of your cross as possible during inspection, and study how the pieces affect each other, so that you quickly can execute the cross, putting all edges in place almost at once. It's easier than it sounds

I'm curious as to how you developed that F/F' fingertrick. Did it just come naturally to you, or did you pick it up from somebody else?

samkli said:

scramble (white on top, red on front): F2 L2 D F D2 L' B2 F2 L2 B2 R2 B' D2 R' F' B R' U2 B2 L' B2 L' U2 D B

U2 x' D' U x y U' R2 U' // Cross
x2 U' R U' R' U' L' U2' L B L' B' L // 1st pair
U2' R' U2 R L' U L // 2nd pair
U' U' R' U' R // 3rd pair
R U R' //4th pair
U F R U R' U' F' // EO
U' R U R' U R U2 R' // CO
U' L U2' L' U2' L F' L' U' L U L F L2' U // PLL

You should try to reduce the cuberotations during your cross. Maybe you could practise solving your cross on the bottom. You could also practise your look-ahead and reduce your pauses. And also, your F and F' moves looks a bit awkward. Try doing them with your index finger. Otherwise, just keep practising.

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting the scramble and the solve! I realized just after I finished the solve that I didn't copy the scramble down.

MTGjumper said:

Don't do F/F' with your ring finger. It's pretty awkward and slow. Either just using your index finger is better, or getting used to using your thumb.

Click to expand...

I know it's not the best way, but I just *can't* use my thumb, it feels like the most clumsy thing in the world, and often I end up locking up or turning the R layer by mistake when I do. Perhaps I'll try using my index finger somehow.

BrainOfSweden said:

As always, practice your look ahead. Reducing pauses, short as they may be, will chop seconds. Also practice doing the cross on bottom. It may seem awkward at first, but it will feel all natural after a few solves. Try to plan as much of your cross as possible during inspection, and study how the pieces affect each other, so that you quickly can execute the cross, putting all edges in place almost at once. It's easier than it sounds

Click to expand...

Yeah, solving the cross on the bottom is next on my "to-do" list. I didn't realize I paused that much until I saw my video. It felt like most of the time was spent *not* turning the cube. I'm surprised I even solved it in 34 seconds considering how much pausing I did.

JonnyWhoopes said:

I'm curious as to how you developed that F/F' fingertrick. Did it just come naturally to you, or did you pick it up from somebody else?

Click to expand...

It just sort of showed up in my muscle memory, I'm not sure how.

Solving the cross on bottom will save some time. Allows you to look for or track your first pair easily. If you really don't want to solve on bottom, some cubers solve it on the left side (or used to, not sure if anyone still does this). I think Feliks also mentions in one of his vid's that you can also do a wide turn when placing your last cross piece, meaning instead of doing something like L2 to insert your last piece, you do an r2 instead.

It's weird though, you had a lot of cube rotations on your cross and pre-F2L, but none during actual F2L, which is where I have the most rotations.

I think once I finish learning full OLL I'll make one of these videos and have people give me advice.

Yeah making a video of your solve and watching it for the first time can definitely be surprising like that. It's probably also a very helpful thing to see exactly what you are doing wrong or where you can improve the most. As others have said, cross on bottom is definitely the biggest thing. Not only will it help with lookahead but it also saves you a cube rotation before your f2l. Beyond that, the biggest thing is just practice and lookahead for a while.

I'm at about the same point you are btw, aside from doing cross on bottom. For a very long time I was stuck at about 37.5 average with 27.49pb. I finally stopped and took a day or so to really focus on improving on planning my cross fully and the results were almost immediate with me suddenly getting a 22.67 a day or two later and then my average just as suddenly dropping to about 34 seconds. I've ahd a few more sub-23's since then as well(current pb is 22.33nl..still very slow by most standards here but at least a big jump from before). Point is though of you do cross on the bottom and plan it out ahead of time, that lets you try to track pieces for your first f2l slot as you solve and eliminates or reduces the pause between cross and f2l. That one point is likely to be the biggest difference between a bad solve and a good one now.

Even if you can't plan the entire cross ahead at first, at least try to keep track of where all the cross pieces are as you're solving it so you don't have that long pause after the third piece to look for the last one.

Gradually learning the rest of the OLLs won't hurt either but that's obviously a fairly low priority since it won't save too much compared to 2-look(though especially when you turn slowly, anything you can do to reduce move count will help).

Don't be afraid to rotate during F2L. B Turns can be really awkward