[Member Intro] New to cubing

[Jen2769]

Hey Guys
I'm new to cubing & joined this site to get some hints and chat with like minded enthusiasts.
I bought a friend in work an anniversary edition Rubik's for his birthday last November and he gave up very quickly. So I started to learn the beginner method around Xmas time and quickly became obsessed.
I have since taught 3 colleagues how to complete a 3x3 and I'm building a collection of speed cubes and I have some custom cubes which I love.
I am learning F2L intuitively to the point I don't ever use the beginners method for corners then the 2nd layer. However my time is bad. My pb with F2L is 1.14 and I range from this to 2.50 max.
My method is all over the place and I transition from F2l back to beginners method to do the top layer's. I've watched so many you tube videos but tbh the oll and pll algorithms are incredibly daunting. To be honest guys I don't even want to think about them until I've got the F2l tight and I bring my time down. My time was quicker on beginners method now with F2L its just not getting under 1min.
I spend a lot of time turning my cube looking for pairs and this is a bad habit.
Did any of you guys experience the same issues
Jen

 

[Kudz]

Well, eldo to forums!
You can start learning 4LLL rn it is only a few algs, all of those are super easy, and learning it won't be problem imo.
Looking for parts is a bad habit and lookahead provides it, but you should not be worried till sub 20/25 barrier, or maybe lower. Learn some basic fingertricks and try to be colour neutral (solve on all 6 colours). Faster you start being CN it easier will be to be CN. It will help you a lot in a further. It won't be easy in the beggening I think tho. Ask more for more questions.
Happy cubing!

 

[Jen2769]

Thanks for your advice. I will start on learning to be colour neutral not something I had thought of tbh. I do def need to work on my finger tricks for sure!

 

[shadowslice e]

Welcome to the forums!

Have you tried other methods than CFOP? You may find them cooler/more to your taste. I would recommend checking out ZZ, roux, PCMS and maybe SSC off the top of my head (there are others that it wouldn't hurt to look at as well)

Don't worry about lookahead too much as it will come more naturally eventually though it never hurts to see how much you can lookahead or drill it using slow solves.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your time on the forums!

 

[Bourney231]

Hi there Jen, (fellow Welshie).

I recently started cubing again before Christmas. Picking up from where I left off 7 years previously with the beginners method. All I have learned extra so far is F2L and finger tricks. I use 2 different algorithms to get the yellow cross, then I make sure all the corners are in place with 1 algorithm, then I learned 2 algorithms to get the yellow face and now 4 algorithms to sort out the last layer edges. (I'm new to all the OLL and PLL stuff so not sure when to use those phrases). But since switching from beginners method where my best was 69 secs, I went back up to 90+ secs and now 2 months after starting to use F2L my average is 48s and my best time is 36.71s.

Personally I'm going to learn look-ahead next as learning 70 algorithms is a bit daunting.
I'm not colour neutral yet either, I am colourblind though and I think being colour neutral might be a hinderance to me I've had a go and I struggled.

I've taught my boss how to solve it and now he is using F2L etc and getting 75-90s average. He doesn't use finger tricks so that's next for him.

That was a bit of a long winded post. Not even sure if it reads well.

But, Hello, all the same.

 

[rishirs321]

Hey Guys
I'm new to cubing & joined this site to get some hints and chat with like minded enthusiasts.
I bought a friend in work an anniversary edition Rubik's for his birthday last November and he gave up very quickly. So I started to learn the beginner method around Xmas time and quickly became obsessed.
I have since taught 3 colleagues how to complete a 3x3 and I'm building a collection of speed cubes and I have some custom cubes which I love.
I am learning F2L intuitively to the point I don't ever use the beginners method for corners then the 2nd layer. However my time is bad. My pb with F2L is 1.14 and I range from this to 2.50 max.
My method is all over the place and I transition from F2l back to beginners method to do the top layer's. I've watched so many you tube videos but tbh the oll and pll algorithms are incredibly daunting. To be honest guys I don't even want to think about them until I've got the F2l tight and I bring my time down. My time was quicker on beginners method now with F2L its just not getting under 1min.
I spend a lot of time turning my cube looking for pairs and this is a bad habit.
Did any of you guys experience the same issues
Jen

Welcome to the forums!
When I first learned how to solve a cube, it took me more than 2:00 minutes to do so. I was really bad at the cross that time since it was completely intuitive. Then, slowly my times dropped to 1:45 and 1:30 and so on. It was when I started getting averages of 1:20 that I looked up CFOP. I used the intuitive method for solving f2l but my times worsened at first. So sometimes I switched back to beginner's but soon got better at it. Check out badmephisto's tutorial, it really helped me. Then I got a PB of 56 seconds (all of this with a very stiff rubik's brand cube and I didn't know of the existence of speedcubes). Anyway fast forward to present times, I have a ZhanChi and my pb is 36 seconds improving day by day.
My advice is first get faster using beginner's method and then use CFOP. Trust me, you'll get faster. Learn 2LOLL, which is very easy, only about 7 algorithms
Good luck!!

 

[rishirs321]

Hi there Jen, (fellow Welshie).

I recently started cubing again before Christmas. Picking up from where I left off 7 years previously with the beginners method. All I have learned extra so far is F2L and finger tricks. I use 2 different algorithms to get the yellow cross, then I make sure all the corners are in place with 1 algorithm, then I learned 2 algorithms to get the yellow face and now 4 algorithms to sort out the last layer edges. (I'm new to all the OLL and PLL stuff so not sure when to use those phrases). But since switching from beginners method where my best was 69 secs, I went back up to 90+ secs and now 2 months after starting to use F2L my average is 48s and my best time is 36.71s.

Personally I'm going to learn look-ahead next as learning 70 algorithms is a bit daunting.
I'm not colour neutral yet either, I am colourblind though and I think being colour neutral might be a hinderance to me I've had a go and I struggled.

I've taught my boss how to solve it and now he is using F2L etc and getting 75-90s average. He doesn't use finger tricks so that's next for him.

That was a bit of a long winded post. Not even sure if it reads well.

But, Hello, all the same.

I too average around 48 seconds and my PB is 36 seconds too.. o.O

 

[TDM]

Hi, welcome! You don't have to learn full OLL and PLL, don't worry about that. I think the best way to practise F2L is by turning slowly and looking ahead: try to never pause. Now, this might mean turning really slowly, but the more you do it the faster you'll be able to turn. It won't be long before turning slowly makes your times faster!

 

[Kudz]

Welcome to the forums!

Have you tried other methods than CFOP? You may find them cooler/more to your taste. I would recommend checking out ZZ, roux, PCMS and maybe SSC off the top of my head (there are others that it wouldn't hurt to look at as well)

Don't worry about lookahead too much as it will come more naturally eventually though it never hurts to see how much you can lookahead or drill it using slow solves.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your time on the forums!

CFOP is nice and easy. Not evrybody needs to be ambitious. It is good idea, but he said sth about F2L.

 

[Joel2274]

Don't be discouraged about your times. I am currently teaching my brother f2l and I just said to his face, "You can't give up right when you learn because just to let you know, your times are going to go up like 20-30 seconds as soon as you start doing f2l." fortunately that didn't discourage him too much, but everyone gets worse after they transition between methods.

 

[Jen2769]

Hey the for the advice. I know I'm going to get it eventually. It was all about time once I learned to solve the cube originally. Now I need to do the cube correctly and forget about my timing ATM because that will come down
Thx for the link I will share that with guys in work

 

[Jen2769]

I didnt know about the other methods so the for the heads up and the link that's awesome! I will check them out. Slow solves is good advice as I execute moves and on reflection I have no idea how I managed to do what I did which is dumb lol

 

[Jen2769]

I'm loving all the tips guys and I'm feeling really positive about getting better with executions and timing now.

 

[Jen2769]

thanks for the welcome slow solves is the next step

 

[Jen2769]

I agree the amount of algorithms to learn is incredibly daunting
I need to forget about my timing and concentrate on my solves , execution and finger tricks.
I'm thinking of stages and taking it 1 step at a time. That's how I learned the beginner method then I advanced and now I need to get better.
I'm not paying attention to what I'm doubt because its been all about getting faster so some great advice I've had is slow solves which I def need to do!
I can not believe how much I LOVE cubing!
Thanks for the message I hope to eventually get my timing down because its shameful ATM compared to you guys but the passions there so that counts lol

 

[rishirs321]

thanks for the welcome slow solves is the next step

Yeah, first start slow and don't worry about the times. And if you feel like you're getting good, you can start timing your solves. Practise on the cross which is what I as slow at. Slowly, you'll get better.

 

[shadowslice e]

Wow quintuple post

 

[shadowslice e]

CFOP is nice and easy. Not evrybody needs to be ambitious. It is good idea, but he said sth about F2L.

Yeah but I am still of the opinion that people should get an idea of what's out there so they don't have so much of a headache switching later like TDM.

Also, it will probably help with the methods that they settle with later to apply other concepts.

It would be beneficial for the community to have a wider range of methods so people can be more ready to try new things or concepts.

 

[TDM]

Yeah but I am still of the opinion that people should get an idea of what's out there so they don't have so much of a headache switching later like TDM.

The problem wasn't with the Roux for me: it was the CFOP. Not using your old method is really important, but also really hard, and I was still practicing CFOP when I shouldn't have been. I'm sure the switch wouldn't be hard, even at sub-15 or -14, for anyone dedicated enough to leave their old method completely for a few months.