Mastered F2L, 4-Look OLL/PLL but average 90 seconds

[Alan50]

I currently average 1.5 minutes on solving the Rubik's cube.

I mastered OLL/PLL yesterday. I have not made a single wrong algorithm for the last layer since today (and I solved about 10 scrambles today).
Edit: when I mean master, I meant master as in that I am able to use F2L/OLL/PLL to a level that I can solve the cube. I didn't mean use it professionally. Sorry for my poor choice of words.

My main trouble is, when I find it difficult finding where the pair pieces are.
To expand what I mean, it's difficult finding a matching corner and edge piece. I waste my time looking for a matching pair.

How can I find them faster? I don't like spending 5+ seconds finding a pair.

I started F2L 10 days ago and OLL/PLL 3 days ago. I only know 2 F2L algorithms.

I do many cube-rotations (mainly to find matching edge/corner pieces).

What do you think I should do? Do you think I should just carry on solving cubes as I am until I get under a minute?

Thank you.

 

[Username]

At that speed its only about practice. Solving the cube should naturally make you faster

 

[cmhardw]

My main trouble is, when I find it difficult finding where the pair pieces are.
To expand what I mean, it's difficult finding a matching corner and edge piece. I waste my time looking for a matching pair.

How can I find them faster? I don't like spending 5+ seconds finding a pair.

I don't even know if this advice is still relevant anymore, but I use corner bias when I am trying to find a pair.

Lately I have been trying to use edge bias more often, paying attention to "good" vs. "bad" edges. A "good" edge is one that can be inserted into its F2L slot using RUL moves only. A "bad" edge is an edge that is flipped and will require an F or B turn (or a cube rotation).

I started F2L 10 days ago and OLL/PLL 3 days ago. I only know 2 F2L algorithms.

I do many cube-rotations (mainly to find matching edge/corner pieces).

Cube rotations should generally be minimized. I do a number of them too, but I have been working lately on using fewer rotations during F2L. Try to use longer turn sequences in RUL that avoid a cube rotation rather than to use a shorter move sequence that requires a cube rotation. I don't even know if this is good advice or not, but try to keep your number of cube rotations during F2L to 3 or fewer?

What do you think I should do? Do you think I should just carry on solving cubes as I am until I get under a minute?

Thank you.

Watch Noah Arthur's video about climbing the mountain (how to train). It's helpful to give you an idea of how often to learn new things, and how often to practice what you know.

Happy cubing!

 

[PJKCuber]

At that speed its only about practice. Solving the cube should naturally make you faster

This is what you said when I couldn't break the 40 second barrier. Become Color Neutral OP!

 

[Bindedsa]

I honestly doubt you have master F2L or 4LLL in under two weeks, especially F2L which is a very intuitive step. I have been cubing over a year, not that long really, and I still see many flaws in my F2L. Continuing to solve and learning nothing new can get you under 15 seconds with enough time. I'd set a goal of 25 solves a day, long term you want to be around 50-100. I personally have done about 25 thousand timed solves this year and I have seen a significant drop in my times.

 

[TDM]

How to get faster with CFOP

 

[CheesecakeCuber]

This is what you said when I couldn't break the 40 second barrier. Become Color Neutral OP!

Why would you tell someone who averages over a minute to become CN? This is horrible advice because it can cause confusion and cement old and bad habits.

And to the OP: Mastered is hardly something that happens over a few days. Follow advice that others have given here. It's good information. Also, for your problem with finding pair pieces to build, try doing large parts of your cross (2+ Pieces) in one look or even blindfolded. This allows you to be able to track some pair pieces and transition smoothly. For the rest of F2L, drill how you solve each pair case, look up more efficient ways, so you can reduce time that is also wasted on trying to solve it/ recog each case.

 

[TheNextFeliks]

This is what you said when I couldn't break the 40 second barrier. Become Color Neutral OP!

He doesn't have to be color neutral to be fast. I average 15 with two color neutrality. His choice though.

 

[goodatthis]

Honestly, there's so much you can do at this stage that the thing that will get you the fastest soonest is practice. Do about 20 timed solves a day, and within a week you will be astonished in how fast you got. That's really the best advice I can give. Practice. Also consider not using F2L just yet, I waited until I was at about 45 seconds before I learned F2L, and less than 30 seconds before I learned 2 look OLL and PLL.

Also get a speedcube, they help a lot if you're not already using one. I recommend the shengshou Aurora.

How to get faster with CFOP

A piece of my mind:

Spoiler

There were lots of other ways you could have answered his question. He's obviously new here and doesn't know where everything is, he posted this question for a reason.

 

[FatBoyXPC]

This might be nitpicking but I wouldn't say that "learned" is equivalent to "mastered" and given that you're still having problems I would say this suggests you haven't mastered it yet.

Honestly the only real answer at this point is you just need to practice. I know you probably don't want to hear that, but honestly if you're at 90 seconds there is a lot you need to improve on. I'd even argue look ahead at this point isn't even in the works, but that's assuming that your F2L takes roughly as long as (or at this point, longer than) your last layer.

You should do some breakdown solves and see where you need improvement, but I'm going to guess a big chunk of this is your F2L needing work. Without seeing a video or knowing your breakdowns we can only make assumptions. The best guess I can make is that your F2L needs work on making your pairs more efficient.

 

[CriticalCubing]

This is what you said when I couldn't break the 40 second barrier. Become Color Neutral OP!

That is some horrible advice. I am just white cross solver and avg 18 sec, and I am not colour neutral. Mats valk is not colour neutral, he is dual colour neutral. Cornelius Dieckmann has a sub 8 avg12 solving just white cross and still you want to be colour neutral.? Why? I h=guess that why you dont improve, because you recognition is not proper, you get confused with colours.

 

[TDM]

There were lots of other ways you could have answered his question. He's obviously new here and doesn't know where everything is, he posted this question for a reason.

I know he's obviously new here and doesn't know where everything is. That's why I posted the thread that answers his questions.

That is some horrible advice. I am just white cross solver and avg 18 sec, and I am not colour neutral. Mats valk is not colour neutral, he is dual colour neutral. Cornelius Dieckmann has a sub 8 avg12 solving just white cross and still you want to be colour neutral.? Why? I h=guess that why you dont improve, because you recognition is not proper, you get confused with colours.

Telling people to use Roux is some horrible advice. I am a CFOP solver and avg 14 sec, and I am not a Roux solver. Mats valk uses CFOP. Cornelius Dieckmann has a sub 8 avg12 solving just CFOP and still you want to use Roux? Why? I guess that why you dont improve, because you recognition is not proper, you get confused with colours.

 

[supercavitation]

Telling people to use Roux is some horrible advice. I am a CFOP solver and avg 14 sec, and I am not a Roux solver. Mats valk uses CFOP. Cornelius Dieckmann has a sub 8 avg12 solving just CFOP and still you want to use Roux? Why? I guess that why you dont improve, because you recognition is not proper, you get confused with colours.

^this .

 

[qqwref]

This is what you said when I couldn't break the 40 second barrier. Become Color Neutral OP!

Wat. 40 seconds is a lot. You don't need special techniques to break a barrier like that, just put in time and practice. I average 11-12ish and use white cross only, F2L/OLL/PLL.




Alan50: You really just have to be patient. You don't learn something and immediately become good at it - nearly everyone who is good has been cubing for years, with some extremely naturally talented people getting good after "only" several months to a year. Do a lot of solves and learn more. If you enjoy cubing, the practice will come naturally, by just solving some cubes every day.

"I mastered OLL/PLL yesterday." If you just learned something, you have a ton of stuff to improve on, and you don't need any special tips to do so. Just do solves. You will quickly improve your speed of recognizing the case, speed of remembering what moves to do, and speed of executing the moves on the cube. Those all take a lot of time to learn, especially the last one, which people can still be improving at after 5+ years of cubing. And remember, you are not using OLL and PLL. You are doing 4-look last layer, so I assume you are using 2-look OLL and 2-look PLL. This is fine for starting out, but with time you will learn full OLL and PLL, and that is significantly faster than 2-look. Of course, it has even more algorithms and takes more time to learn and to get used to!

"My main trouble is, when I find it difficult finding where the pair pieces are. To expand what I mean, it's difficult finding a matching corner and edge piece. I waste my time looking for a matching pair. How can I find them faster? I don't like spending 5+ seconds finding a pair. I started F2L 10 days ago" Do more solves. Lots and lots of solves. Since this is a speed sport, you have to get used to everything that can happen, to the point where you can respond almost without thinking. You want to be able to see a position and know immediately what to do. That won't happen in a few weeks. Chris Hardwick gives some tips to recognizing the pairs (find the corner first, then the edge - and you can find the corner by looking for the color that is normally on the bottom of the cube) and I would add to it that once you are more used to how the cube works you will instantly know a piece when you see it, and you can just mentally keep track of all the F2L pieces you have seen, so you will know if there are two matching ones.

"I do many cube-rotations (mainly to find matching edge/corner pieces)." Don't worry about that at all yet. Cube rotations are one of the last things you should try to get rid of. As long as you do not have the cross on the top of the cube while you solve it, you will naturally use fewer and fewer rotations as you get better at finding pieces. Maybe when you are under 15 or 20 seconds, it is time to worry about saving a few fractions of a second by rotating less.

 

[RobertFontaine]

The vast majority don't appear to practice on purpose.
Adding appropriately massed practice to areas where you have the biggest opportunities to improve in addition to doing solves will likely pay off soonest.
The ability to learn algorithms is limited so you likely need to be working on adding an algorithm a day.
Specific Cross practice, Specific F2L practice, Speeding up algorithms, and focus on recognition during solves.

Blindly hitting the timer 25 times a day may improve your times or it may not. I would guess you would improve tps and recognition until you hit a wall if you don't approach practice more methodically.

 

[PJKCuber]

That is some horrible advice. I am just white cross solver and avg 18 sec, and I am not colour neutral. Mats valk is not colour neutral, he is dual colour neutral. Cornelius Dieckmann has a sub 8 avg12 solving just white cross and still you want to be colour neutral.? Why? I h=guess that why you dont improve, because you recognition is not proper, you get confused with colours.

I get confused with colors because I have a color vision deficiency.
Feliks Zemdegs has a sub 6 Ao5 and sub 7 ao100 and he's CN
The cubers who podiumed at US Nationals 2014 (3x3) were all CN(Collin Burns,Feliks Zemdegs,Rowe Hessler).
Mats Valk's WR has an OLL Skip, Feliks's 5.66 is fullstep.
Your last line makes me want to solve only blue and green.
Why do I want to be CN?
Because of Faz,Collin,Rowe and Robert Yau.
If they can be CN, so can I.
"It is our choices who make who we are, and not our qualities"

 

[kcl]

I get confused with colors because I have a color vision deficiency.
Feliks Zemdegs has a sub 6 Ao5 and sub 7 ao100 and he's CN
The cubers who podiumed at US Nationals 2014 (3x3) were all CN(Collin Burns,Feliks Zemdegs,Rowe Hessler).
Mats Valk's WR has an OLL Skip, Feliks's 5.66 is fullstep.
Your last line makes me want to solve only blue and green.
Why do I want to be CN?
Because of Faz,Collin,Rowe and Robert Yau.
If they can be CN, so can I.
"It is our choices who make who we are, and not our qualities"

Cornelius Dieckmann is one of the fastest solvers out there and he is only white/yellow. Same with Drew Brads. Lucas Etter has an 8.2x official average with only white cross.

 

[MM99]

No ones mastered f2l yet...

 

[Bryan Chia]

I get confused with colors because I have a color vision deficiency.
Feliks Zemdegs has a sub 6 Ao5 and sub 7 ao100 and he's CN
The cubers who podiumed at US Nationals 2014 (3x3) were all CN(Collin Burns,Feliks Zemdegs,Rowe Hessler).
Mats Valk's WR has an OLL Skip, Feliks's 5.66 is fullstep.
Your last line makes me want to solve only blue and green.
Why do I want to be CN?
Because of Faz,Collin,Rowe and Robert Yau.
If they can be CN, so can I.
"It is our choices who make who we are, and not our qualities"

PJK, why not you stick to one thing that you're doing first then you move on?
You wanted to learn 4x4, OH, CN, Roux. all at once.. Why not you just focus on getting faster at 3x3 first, as you said you wanted to get lower than sub20 then just do that first.
I understand your situation but just focus on one thing first. like my f2l is my biggest problem therefore Im only focusing on that at the moment
Yes, everyone can be a CN, everyone can be sub5. Try not to compare yourself with them first

EDIT: what? why is he banned?

 

[uberCuber]

PJK, why not you stick to one thing that you're doing first then you move on?
You wanted to learn 4x4, OH, CN, all at once.. Why not you just focus on getting faster at 3x3 first, as you said you wanted to get lower than sub20 then just do that first.
I understand your situation but just focus on one thing first. like my f2l is my biggest problem therefore Im only focusing on that at the moment

Yeah this is important. By this point I'm pretty decent at almost all of the events, but in getting to this point, and in continuing to make progress, I am always just working on one or two things at a time. Trying to divide your attention between several different things that are all difficult for you won't be as conducive to quick progress unless you really are putting a huge number of hours per day into cubing