[Help Thread] What To Do Next...

Well, in a way, you are already leaning lookahead, but if you mean "be able to solve without pauses" i dont think its really worth it yet. You will become faster but there are easier and faster ways to get sub 60. Making your F2L more efficient, learning all F2L Cases so well you can solve them blandfolded, try to minimize rotations and improve recognition for both F2L cases and LL-algorithms would be "better" i think.
I completely and utterly disagree. It is always best to use lookahead and try to solve with no pauses right from the start and if you don't you will have a hard time trying to do it later and will definitely regret your decision
 
So based on the videos you provided for f2l, you have a pretty good background knowledge of advanced f2l but it probably isnt very "fluent" yet. I suggest checking out Paradox Cubing's video on advanced f2l here:
. After you learn that, if you want some more specific f2l tricks that may come in handy go here:
. However, these are quite a bit more advanced and may not be what you are looking for.

For cross, I also recommend checking out ParadoxCubing's video on advanced cross:
. Practice it and remember cross should be rotationless and ideally done in 0.5-3 sec. Just keep using the tricks in that video and practice like so:
1. Scramble cube and look around the best way to do cross. Give yourself as much inspection time as you need, speed will come with time.
2. Execute what you planned as fast as possible and if your cross is not done, analyze what you did wrong. Just focus on one step at a time so do not finish your solve. Just scramble again, do cross, scramble, cross, etc. You can also do the same with cross and f2l.
3. As you get more comfortable with one looking your cross you can start trying to find the first f2l pair in inspection.

Also, dont worry about your times with the advanced method. You will be slower than normal but once you master the advanced method it will be a lot faster. I suggest you just practice without a timer for a while and see the magic happen.
As for OLL and PLL start learning full OLL and PLL when you hit around 25 sec average but that is more long term so focus on cross/f2l for now. Good luck!

Good specific advice, very helpful. However, I think I'll learn 2-look PLL to go with the 2-look OLL I've already learned. The beginner's method "PLL" that I'm currently using could be up to 4 algs, which is too long, in my opinion. If it helps, my current average (done today) breaks down as follows: 5 seconds for cross, 25 seconds for F2L, 5 seconds for 2-look OLL, and 10 seconds for beginner's "PLL", with a whole cube average of 45 seconds.

I completely and utterly disagree. It is always best to use lookahead and try to solve with no pauses right from the start and if you don't you will have a hard time trying to do it later and will definitely regret your decision

I agree that look-ahead would be good to learn now. Do you have any advice for look-ahead? I can create the cross in my head and do it without looking, but it's not like I've created a list of moves in my head to do it, so that I can focus on something else when I am looking (probably didn't make any sense :D).
 
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It depends, whats your definition of look ahead? I think i became sub 30 without "real" lookahead. It will most definatelly help but full ZBLL will do that to. with your times "lookahead" isnt really needed but try not to pause to much and have a consitamt turning speed insead of 5tps turning but with 2 second pauses between each step.
 
Good specific advice, very helpful. However, I think I'll learn 2-look PLL to go with the 2-look OLL I've already learned. The beginner's method "PLL" that I'm currently using could be up to 4 algs, which is too long, in my opinion. If it helps, my current average (done today) breaks down as follows: 5 seconds for cross, 25 seconds for F2L, 5 seconds for 2-look OLL, and 10 seconds for beginner's "PLL", with a whole cube average of 45 seconds.



I agree that look-ahead would be good to learn now. Do you have any advice for look-ahead? I can create the cross in my head and do it without looking, but it's not like I've created a list of moves in my head to do it, so that I can focus on something else when I am looking (probably didn't make any sense :D).

So your cross seem to be doing fine. Try to cut it to 3 sec if you can but I wouldn't sweat it. However, 25 sec for F2L has a huge room for improvement. Try to find more efficient ways to complete each F2L pair. Im not sure if you have learned fingertricks since your first post but if you haven't, I strongly suggest you learn to doubleflick the U and D layers. Also you can drill triggers like R U R' U' to get your tps up. As for the lookahead, just try this. When practicing, turn slower so that when creating and inserting an F2L pair, you are also tracking the corner and edge for your next f2l pair. Then you should be able to transition to the next F2l pair with no pauses.
For 2 look pll, there are 6 algorithms which can be found here : http://badmephisto.com/2LookPLL.pdf
The length and number of those algorithms may seem daunting but just practice each one over and over and muscle memory will follow. For example, if you ask me to say my 57 oll, 21 pll, and WV in notation form, I will not be able to do it since it is all in muscle memory.
 
So your cross seem to be doing fine. Try to cut it to 3 sec if you can but I wouldn't sweat it. However, 25 sec for F2L has a huge room for improvement. Try to find more efficient ways to complete each F2L pair. Im not sure if you have learned fingertricks since your first post but if you haven't, I strongly suggest you learn to doubleflick the U and D layers. Also you can drill triggers like R U R' U' to get your tps up. As for the lookahead, just try this. When practicing, turn slower so that when creating and inserting an F2L pair, you are also tracking the corner and edge for your next f2l pair. Then you should be able to transition to the next F2l pair with no pauses.
For 2 look pll, there are 6 algorithms which can be found here : http://badmephisto.com/2LookPLL.pdf
The length and number of those algorithms may seem daunting but just practice each one over and over and muscle memory will follow. For example, if you ask me to say my 57 oll, 21 pll, and WV in notation form, I will not be able to do it since it is all in muscle memory.

Well, I've already memorized (at least for now, I'll need to keep practicing to make the algs permanent/muscle memory) all of 2-look PLL, which shows why F2L and the cross are frustrating to me. I can memorize algs really quickly and then just keep practicing them to get faster, but the intuitive parts of solving come very slowly for me in comparison. By the way, the F2L videos you provided were very helpful because they were full of algs :D. I'll take some time to learn those and see what my F2L time is like after that.

One thing I'm not getting is how to solve without rotations. Maybe it's just too natural for me to rotate, and so I don't get it. I don't know. Either way, I just cannot seem to understand solving without rotating. Can you try to explain that for me?
 
If you want to solve without rotations you need to learn how to pair and insert from any angle. Its a little tricky but it will get you faster, althogh it can somethimes be faster to rotate and execute another way. I dont think you should focus that much on rotatinless F2L since on of the big advantages of CFOP is that its so flexible. Constraining yourself that much wont help to much, there are other methods built around the idea of no rotations like Roux or ZZ.
 
Well, I've already memorized (at least for now, I'll need to keep practicing to make the algs permanent/muscle memory) all of 2-look PLL, which shows why F2L and the cross are frustrating to me. I can memorize algs really quickly and then just keep practicing them to get faster, but the intuitive parts of solving come very slowly for me in comparison. By the way, the F2L videos you provided were very helpful because they were full of algs :D. I'll take some time to learn those and see what my F2L time is like after that.

One thing I'm not getting is how to solve without rotations. Maybe it's just too natural for me to rotate, and so I don't get it. I don't know. Either way, I just cannot seem to understand solving without rotating. Can you try to explain that for me?

Ok So I see that you prefer algorithms to intuitive solving. That is perfectly fine and you can get fast by doing that as well. Here are some videos for different F2L cases and algorithms for them.

For the rotationless solving:

f2l_adv_fr_b23.gif

For example, in the F2L case above, Im guessing what you would do is a y' rotation and do R' U' R and then insert the pair from the back. To avoid the rotation, I could just hold the cube as it is and perform U' r U' R' U R U r'. That is just one example and there are countless other intuitive tricks that you will learn for avoiding rotations or you could just refer to the videos above for some algs to avoid rotation. Hope that helps!
 
Hope that helps!

Yes, that helps a ton. I really appreciate all your help (and everyone else's too). Like I said above, I'll work on some F2L algs and see how that helps. Also, as an idea of how fast I learn algs, I already almost have 2-look PLL into muscle memory.
 
https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/First_Two_Layers

This page has pretty much every basic F2L case with solutions. It doesn't have the algs from y rotation position, but I use the left handed version of the algs for most of the cases, with some exceptions. Most of the "advanced F2L" videos don't really show these basic cases, usually they are from different angles or when the edge piece is in a wrong F2L slot, which will be more helpful after learning these basic cases.

These are kind of "F2L algs" but you really don't need to learn the algs, at least I never memorised any of them, I just used the page to find good ways to do F2l cases and pretty much instantly had it in my muscle memory because these are very short. You said you prefer learning algs to intuitive things, these are pretty easy algs to learn so I'd say they will become very intuitive no matter how you learn them. Just don't learn too many at a time so you can easily get them to your muscle memory.

It shows many possible solutions for every F2L case, so you can choose which is the best one for you. Don't just pick the first one and expect it to be the best, at least for me that's not the case on most of them. On some of them you can use a better alg if the back right or front left F2L slots are not solved yet, so you should use them when possible. For example, the F2L 25 case on that page, I use R' F' R U R U' R' F, or U D' R U' R' D if the back right F2L slot isn't solved.

And lastly, rotationless F2L isn't always the best way. Rotations aren't as bad as some people think they are. It's good have F2L algs that don't have too many rotations, but if the rotationless alg is much worse then it's better to rotate. Inserting pairs from the back is really helpful, because it's just as easy as from the front, but things like left handed inverse sledgehammer save you a rotation, but for me it's really awkward and slow compared to just rotating.
 
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