How I Learned F2L

[Lucas Garron]

When aah staahted cubin', in the good' ol' days, we didn't have no fancy tools for learnin' to get fast. And when we wanted to laahrn F2L, there wa'n't no good place wi' good, printable algs. Aah had to make mah alg sheet mahself, so aah went ove' ta good ol' Macky's site, copied his F2L page inta Word, and made mahself an alg sheet.

And back then, we di'n't have silly distinct'ns like "intuitive" and "algorithmic" F2L. Ya just learned ta do it, plain an' simple. Aah printed out that sheet, kept doin' the algs there oveh' and oveh' until aah memorized 'em, and then understood 'em. It was real work, kiddos, finding out what ya had ta learn, and HOW ya were supposed to learn it. None a' this "wat do i do next, plz hlp" bizzness.

Anyhow, hope that helps y'all understand a bit a' what i' meant to be a cuber in those days, and whaa we don't take too kindly to y'all bein' too lazy to do ya' own work.

Anyhow, aah recently found that old alg sheet o' mine on mah hard drive. I know I still got that phys'cal copy lyin' around in an old book, but aah thought ya might appreciate ta know what it looked like, so here's a PDF: http://archive.garron.us/pdf/2006/how_lgarron_learned_F2L.pdf (Aug. 15, 2006)
(Tha's right, it didn't even have mah own color scheme. Ya had to be flexible those days ta learn from a Japanese site.)

 

[Chrish]

Dear jebus

link doesn't work for me btw

 

[Ranzha]

Link doesn't work. 403 error when I try the root directory.

 

[blah]

Now if only you actually talked like that in real life with your half-German-ish accent.

 

[Sa967St]

Ohey that's how I learned F2L too , except I used algs from cubestation.co.uk instead of Macky's site.

 

[Edward]

Not exactly how I learned (using intuitive) but I certainly wasn't being lazy and just asking D:

 

[cmhardw]

Aah learned mah F2L algs from the source

 

[Tyjet66]

When aah staahted cubin', in the good' ol' days, we didn't have no fancy tools for learnin' to get fast. And when we wanted to laahrn F2L, there wa'n't no good place wi' good, printable algs. Aah had to make mah alg sheet mahself, so aah went ove' ta good ol' Macky's site, copied his F2L page inta Word, and made mahself an alg sheet.

And back then, we di'n't have silly distinct'ns like "intuitive" and "algorithmic" F2L. Ya just learned ta do it, plain an' simple. Aah printed out that sheet, kept doin' the algs there oveh' and oveh' until aah memorized 'em, and then understood 'em. It was real work, kiddos, finding out what ya had ta learn, and HOW ya were supposed to learn it. None a' this "wat do i do next, plz hlp" bizzness.

Anyhow, hope that helps y'all understand a bit a' what i' meant to be a cuber in those days, and whaa we don't take too kindly to y'all bein' too lazy to do ya' own work.

Anyhow, aah recently found that old alg sheet o' mine on mah hard drive. I know I still got that phys'cal copy lyin' around in an old book, but aah thought ya might appreciate ta know what it looked like, so here's a PDF: http://archive.garron.us/pdf/2006/how_lgarron_learned_F2L.pdf
(Tha's right, it didn't even have mah own color scheme. Ya had to be flexible those days ta learn from a Japanese site.)

I was unable to finish reading even a 1/4 of this post...

 

[Cool Frog]

I was unable to finish reading even a 1/4 of this post...

Ditto
All I was able to read was the link and the title. Intuitive F2L... I wonder if they both take the same amount of time to learn?

 

[StachuK1992]

Heck, even ~3 years ago when I started, you had to look around to get good sources.
Personally, I used the link Chris provided, and then only later on was able to switch to "intuitive" F2L. Nowadays, one can just go on the wiki, type in F2L, and have F2L provided on a platter for them.
It's fantastic in some ways because newcomers can learn faster, but also comes with the price of not getting that satisfaction of discovery when YOU "figure out" how to do a certain case without some fancy schmancy algorithm.

I still have the majority of the papers I used, about F2L, OLL, PLL...actually, I have some CLL and ELL sites printed out from 2007!

As cubing progresses, there will always be those who ask and those who find; I'm sure back in the early cubing days there were those that simply swooped onto the Yahoo! group and asked away as many of us did?

-statue

 

[Joël]

Aah learned mah F2L algs from the source

That's where aaah started tooo! With the algs "upsahde-down"!

And yeah, intuitive vs algo F2L is the biggest BS going on on this forum! Well spoken.

 

[Evan_Frame]

Let me get this straight, 'Back in the day' you went to some other guy's site and "copied his sheet"? Then repeated and memorized the algorithms?

Wow. That's impressive. Totally not like it is now, where you go to someone else's site, copy their algorithms and do them over and over till you have them memorized. 'Back in the day' sounds cool.

 

[Deleted member 2864]

Go vets.

I had badmephisto, so it was easy for me.

 

[Kirjava]

websites are for noobs, I taught myself.

 

[Chrish]

websites are for noobs, I taught myself.

Mhmm

 

[MichaelP.]

websites are for noobs, I taught myself.

Sick bro.

 

[Kirjava]

Mhmm

hm?

 

[cmhardw]

Let me get this straight, 'Back in the day' you went to some other guy's site and "copied his sheet"? Then repeated and memorized the algorithms?

Wow. That's impressive. Totally not like it is now, where you go to someone else's site, copy their algorithms and do them over and over till you have them memorized. 'Back in the day' sounds cool.

It's funny that you mention this, because we second generation cubers got the same reaction from the first generation cubers who started in the 80's. Most of them discovered or invented all of their algorithms either alone or in working with only a handful of other people. The fact that we second generation cubers learned off their websites was seen as a hack way to approach it even back then.

Lucas' comment, if I may infer and Lucas please correct me if I'm wrong, is mostly directed toward the way that the questions coming out on the forum tend to reflect a person having done little or no work at all to "look around" the cubing world and see what is out there. Questions are of the format "Make me faster PLZ. Where do I go to become awesome?" not "I have tried Website X, Website Y, and Website Z. I like some things from each, but where do I go to learn more about steps 1 and 2 from website A, etc..."

Thoughtful questions will more often than not bring thoughtful answers. And to answer your questions, some of us asked the same kinds of stupid questions back in the day and were berated by the first generation cubers for it *raises hand*

@Joël: Completely agree. I learned F2L algorithmically first, then later came to an understanding of the algs. As far as I can tell I haven't yet burst into a firey ball of failure raining sadness, baby tears, and cubie pieces all over my computer keyboard.

 

[Erik]

Oh the good old days *dream dream* you could be world class with just sub-20...

 

[BigSams]

Oh the good old days *dream dream* you could be world class with just sub-20...

I lol'd.

I remember learning stuff from cubeloop and "the source". Man that stuff feels outdated now.
@cmhardw even the first generation had outside resources, it's not like they were all brilliant from the start. Fridrich herself said on her site that her method was published in its entirety in a magazine and that certain champs back then learned several methods.