[Help Thread] 2 look discussion - OLL and PLL

[PurpleBanana]

OK thank you. I think it's the mirror cases that are throwing me off. I'm new to recognizing that and knowing the correct sequence of moves.

You don't need to learn any mirror cases.

Here is a question for example. PurpleBanana listed T perm (or similar) for an adjacent swap and Y perm for a diagonal swap in the first look. BadMephisto's pdf has an E-perm in there too. Is that counted as 'something similar'?

No. E perm is a diagonal swap algorithm, so for the purposes of 2-look PLL it is interchangeable with a Y perm. Come to think about it, I might as well categorize all the PLLs in this way:

Adjacent: A, F, G, J, R, T
Diagonal: E, N, V, Y

You can use any algorithm from the first list for an adjacent swap and any algorithm from the second list for a diagonal swap.

Also, he didn't mention A-perms in 2-look PLL at all. What am I missing here?

See above.

I don't mean to go on, but I'm full of questions.

This is the place for those questions. If you have any more please ask them and I will do my best to answer them.

 

[One Wheel]

You don't need to learn mirror cases or A-perm, but I found both of those exceptionally helpful when I was learning PLL. A is an easy alg to learn and to mirror, and a good starting point. Particularly for G-perms, for quite a while I did an A-perm followed by a U-perm.

As to an E-perm, my bad. I was mixing up E and F. I memorized moves, not names.

Some algs are basically symmetrical, and it's not worth learning to mirror them, but in my experience there are others that are worth learning to do with either hand, because it's easier than learning to do the same moves in reverse order, or learning a different alg. I mirror A, U (sort of) R, J, N, and G perms.

 

[PurpleBanana]

Unless you can do the mirrors as fast as the normal algs you should learn the normal algs. However, if you can perform the lefty algs as fast, go ahead and use them.

 

[One Wheel]

Unless you can do the mirrors as fast as the normal algs you should learn the normal algs. However, if you can perform the lefty algs as fast, go ahead and use them.

On the other hand, if you practice both hands equally from day 1 the difference will be negligible. Furthermore, if you can learn to mirror and thereby skip learning 5 new PLL algs, that's 5 more 1-look OLL algs you can learn in the same time. And on BadMephisto's sheet, just because I have it handy, there are 11 OLLs which he gives different algs for a mirrored case, and 5 more for which he uses a mirrored alg. That means that full OLL and PLL can be learned in 16 PLL and 41 OLL, or 57 algs, if you learn to mirror, versus 21 PLL and 57 OLL, or 78 algs, if you don't, which you need to do for 2 of his PLL and 5 of his OLL algs anyway. If you assume that on average each alg is equally difficult to learn, that would be only 6 more algs to learn full OLL and PLL, and then go on and learn Winter Variation (16+41+27=84), versus not mirroring and learning full OLL and PLL (21+57=78).

 

[PurpleBanana]

On the other hand, if you practice both hands equally from day 1 the difference will be negligible.

That's debatable. I have pairs of OLLs which are mirrors of each other that I learned simultaneously, but the right-handed versions are significantly faster.

 

[One Wheel]

That's debatable. I have pairs of OLLs which are mirrors of each other that I learned simultaneously, but the right-handed versions are significantly faster.

Fair enough. I guess it all depends on your definition of negligible. There will be a different point for each person where they decide that a particular alg is slowing them down enough that it is worthwhile to learn another alg that does the same thing. So far I've only bothered to learn a second alg for a U-perm, but I'm sure there will be others. Until you have algs that do everything that you want them to do (full PLL, and probably full OLL, for most people), I maintain that it is worthwhile to learn algs as quickly as reasonably possible, which includes mirroring.

 

[PurpleBanana]

Until you have algs that do everything that you want them to do (full PLL, and probably full OLL, for most people), I maintain that it is worthwhile to learn algs as quickly as reasonably possible, which includes mirroring.

Unless you're just going to have to learn better algs later, in which case learning the original alg was a waste.

 

[One Wheel]

Unless you're just going to have to learn better algs later, in which case learning the original alg was a waste.

Not necessarily. Different algs work better for different people and in different situations, and you can't know for sure what will work for you until you try it. Furthermore, I'm not talking about learning bad algs, I'm talking about learning a good RH alg and performing it with your left hand. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
BadMephisto recommends the following algs:
Ub: R2 U R U R' U' R' U' R' U R'
Ua: R U' R U R U R U' R' U' R2

I learned the Ub alg in about 20-30 minutes. I could have taken another 20-30 minutes to learn the Ua alg, but instead I took about 2 minutes to learn to do the Ub alg with my left hand (L2' U' L' U' L U L U L U' L). I then learned the H- and Z-perms, and I could permute any arrangement of edges. Later I decided that the re-grip required by my U-perms was really annoying, and I found the following algs on one of Chris Olson's videos:
Ua: M2 U M U2 M' U M2
Ub: M2 U' M U2 M' U' M2
In my opinion these are far superior algs for 3x3 and 4x4, but the first algs I learned are better for big cubes because of the difficulty of slice moves. Both sets of algs are fine algs, but they have different applications. The difference in time between BadMephisto's Ub alg and its mirrored counterpart is minimal. It's worth knowing it for solving big cubes, even though I never use it in the vast majority of my solves, which are 3x3 and 4x4. It wasn't a waste of time to learn the Ub alg, but in my case it would have been a waste of time to learn the Ua alg rather than mirror Ub. It's at least worth trying out, if for no other reason than that you might be surprised by an alg that actually works better left-handed.

 

[PurpleBanana]

I learned the Ub alg in about 20-30 minutes. I could have taken another 20-30 minutes to learn the Ua alg, but instead I took about 2 minutes to learn to do the Ub alg with my left hand (L2' U' L' U' L U L U L U' L).

Well, as you learn more algorithms, you will improve at it, and the time required for you to learn one will drastically decrease.

 

[Master1243]

I have currently finished memorizing all of the beginner method algorithms and am good at F2L, I am trying to learn 2Look, but I just can't seem to notice a difference. Is it actually going to help me?

 

[Loiloiloi]

If you just finished learning the 4Look algorithms, you should probably get a little bit faster with them before moving onto 2Look. Also, you should consider that 3Look is a step. Many people wait until around 25 seconds to start learning full OLL.

 

[pglewis]

The good news: yes, it will make you faster. The bad news: first it will make you significantly slower. Memorizing the algs probably isn't even half the challenge IMO, the kicker is recognition. It was probably a full month after I learned all (most) of the PLL algs before I hit the break-even point because 2-look PLL is far simpler to recognize cases and equated to less staring time until my recog was more natural.

I'd learn full PLL first, more bang for the buck and less than half the algs to memorize. Also, you don't have to do it as an all or nothing project; you can learn them a few at a time. I think the time to learn new algs is whenever you feel the ones you use in your solves are solid and you recognize and execute them well. I learned full PLL when I was still averaging around a minute, not because I expected it to shave off lots of time but because my 4-look was solid and my lookahead develops so much more slowly than learning algs for me. I'm picking up a few OLLs now, though not on a mission to learn them all in any particular time frame. Full PLL is comfortable at this point and my lookahead continues to be slower at developing. I'm using the information here to prioritize which to learn first.

 

[Oatch]

The Beginner's method solution to Last Layer is fairly inefficient, having to repeatedly perform the same algorithms until the desired pieces are solved. So, learning a more direct approach (2-look) will drastically lower your movecount, and even if you keep your TPS the same, your times should theoretically drop. If they aren't, there's probably a recognition issue, or there's difficulty recalling the algs, as pglewis has said above. Work on recognition, drill your algs and I'm sure your times will drop.

Whenever you learn new algs or a new method, your times will not improve immediately - sometimes they even get worse! I've experience this a lot while learning COLL, and the key is you just have to stick with it and integrate the algs into your solves until they become second nature, and then speed will come naturally.

 

[obelisk477]

I have currently finished memorizing all of the beginner method algorithms and am good at F2L, I am trying to learn 2Look, but I just can't seem to notice a difference. Is it actually going to help me?

if you'd prefer to think about it this way, 1 look is *definitely* going to improve your times, and you can't practically get to 1 look without 2 look first.

 

[Loiloiloi]

if you'd prefer to think about it this way, 1 look is *definitely* going to improve your times, and you can't practically get to 1 look without 2 look first.

How do you 1 Look? I don't know of any method which allows you to solve the last layer without either permutating or orienting it beforehand

 

[DGCubes]

I think the terminology used in this thread could be slightly confusing. When you say 2-look, do you mean 2-look last layer (full OLL and full PLL), or 2-look OLL and 2-look PLL (4-look last layer)?

 

[obelisk477]

How do you 1 Look? I don't know of any method which allows you to solve the last layer without either permutating or orienting it beforehand

As DG said, I'm pretty certain OP meant 2 look OLL and 2 look PLL, and so my statement '1 look' means 1 look OLL and 1 look PLL

 

[Ludovicus]

I hope i'm not too late @@.
When i started learning CFOP, i was doing around 40~60 secs with beginners method if i'm not mistaken, with a PB of 36s with a lot of skips. After i started learning F2L, my times actually went up a little bit, 'cuz i already had a cool look-ahead with beginner's method, but pretty much no look-ahead with F2L. So my times went up to 50secs+ again, but it started to go down within a few days of practice.
Then i learned 2 Look OLL and full PLL. At first my times were still around 40~50 secs, but it didn't take too long to go down to around 30 seconds. And then i learned full OLL, what didn't really seem to make much of difference at first. But full OLL, or 1-Look-OLL is one less step than 2-Look-OLL, that can vary from 2~5 secs faster, which can make quite a difference sometimes lol. When i had learned full CFOP i stayed quite a while at sub30, and then stopped practicing, and only recently i came back practicing.
I pretty much did 700+ solves in the past three days, my times were going from 18secs to 45 secs sometimes. After 200ish solves i became more consistent sub30, and after 500 solves i finally got my average of 100 under 25 secs, and by 700 solves i got a PB of 16.72 secs with no skips, tho a lot of easy f2l (that was today/yesterday, depending on ur time zone lol) =D. And knowing full CFOP really helps, i couldn't really imagine myself doing as many sub20 singles than i did in the past days if i didn't know full CFOP, as i have a bad cube and bad look-ahead/TPS.

Sooo, summarizing everything:

Once you learn more algs (as some people also have said before me) you will, at first, be a little slower. But once you get used to your algs (and start using some nice fingertricks to execute them too), you will probably get faster and faster as you practice. I also recommend the same as some of the above did: Learn 2-Look-OLL first (that is, 2 algs to orient the edges, and 7 algs to orient the corners), and full PLL (21 algs). Once you get really used to these you can start learning full OLL as you wish.

 

[CFOP beginner]

Hai.I learned beginners method and can solve cube in a minute.My friend suggested me to learn CFOP.now iam learning the 2look thing.I would like to have the help of you experts.

 

[shadowslice e]

Hai.I learned beginners method and can solve cube in a minute.My friend suggested me to learn CFOP.now iam learning the 2look thing.I would like to have the help of you experts.

Have you looked at any methods other than CFOP? You may find them more to you taste or better for you.