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I believe some uber fast cubers are sub 20 with beginners. Not sure the fastest that has been recorded, but I'd expect somewhere in the 12-14 second region.

Not that you'd want to persist with beginners as your main method.
I'm sub-25 with the beginner's method, so I'd expect that some "uber fast cubers" could average sub-10 with it. That might be a bit far though :p Sub-15 average shouldn't be a problem.
For the best time recorded, Antoine has some crazy single where he skipped most of the LL steps.
 
The One Answer Question Thread

Where's the best place to buy replacement parts? The Cubicle is making at least $100 per cube from it, so I'm sure there's somewhere cheaper. I'm missing a Zhanchi edge.


It's because replacement parts can run a huge loss. Think about it. They buy the cube, sell only part of it. What if nobody buys the rest of the parts?
Edit: fixed fail quote
 
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Hello, Lately my times have gotten worse. for about 3-5 days i was getting sub twenties every 10-ish solves.
now my average has rocketed from 23 to about 28. PLEASE HELP ME! It took so much practice to get sub-20
(single)
 
Hello, Lately my times have gotten worse. for about 3-5 days i was getting sub twenties every 10-ish solves.
now my average has rocketed from 23 to about 28. PLEASE HELP ME! It took so much practice to get sub-20
(single)

It's probably a placebo effect. Honestly, there's no reason your times would randomly shoot up 5 seconds on average. Sure, Every now and then I Have a crappy session. I average about 18-19 seconds, but some sessions i'll do an average of 50 and get like a 22 second average. I stop, pick it up later, and I'm fine. It's probably all in your head. If you're 100% certain it's not in your head (and I wouldn't be certain if I were you), then it's possible you need to re-lube your cube, possible the tension got off in some mysterious way, or maybe you haven't gotten enough sleep. My only advice (because I think it's probably in your head), is to sit down, do an average of 20 or so, and ignore the fact that you've BEEN getting bad times. Calm down before each solve, focus on your cross/F2L specifically and just solve it like you know you can.
 
Watch Badmephisto's cross tutorial. Job done.

Also, strongly agree with Phillip, DON'T use algorithmic F2L. All basic intuitive F2L involves is setting up pieces into one of two states: one where the pair is made in the U layer, and can be inserted using U R U' R' (or similar); the other case is where the pieces are on opposite sides of the U face, with opposite edge colours facing up, and can be inserted using R U R'. Everything else in intuitive F2l effectively boils down to setup moves for these cases. I only use two algs for F2L, both for 'stuck piece' cases, where the intuitive solution is really inefficient. Here's 'intuitive' F2L in a nutshell:

1. Find edge and corner
2. If they are stuck together, separate them
3. Set up either an U R U' R' or R U R' case
4. Insert
5. Back to 1

You will notice patterns, which will make you more efficient, but don't learn F2L cases and algs, it will fill your mind with unnecessary clutter. You'll notice that most of the F2L 'algs' you're learning end in either URU'R' or RUR'. That's because all they do is set up one of these basic cases. Instead of learning these algs, look at what they do in order to set up the basic inserts, and try to replicate this yourself. Without algs!

Good luck.

Thanks! I've kinda figured out that every F2L alg boils to those five steps. My problem is that I can't intuitively do those yet. I've tried that, but I often end up getting stuck how to pair them up. I can at least intuitively knock them up to the U face, but I struggle placing them next to each other. By telling me that there are only two real cases of pairing them up, you saved me a lot of time. I'll just have to look out for these cases and try to do them.

By the way, the reason I'm so determined to learn these is because I have a friend who gets to 1:16 and she only knows the method wherein you permute the last layer edges, orient the the last layer corners then rotate the corners one by one until you solve the entire cube. I never learned that method since the one first taught to me was the one wherein you form any cross on the last layer, orient the corners then use Sune and/or Anti-Sune repeatedly changing the orientation state until you get a "fish" state and then finishing it up with one last Sune or Anti-Sune and finally permuting the edges. I don't know the names of these methods. Lol. I never learned the method she uses since I always mess up the cube trying to do the last step. I believe the only reason she hasn't reached sub60 yet is because she adamantly refuses to solve the first layer with a cross and insists that she's better off finding the first layer pieces and blindly throwing them into position. It's slow and counterproductive since she often knocks solved pieces out of place and returns to them later. I'm most impressed by the fact that she can do algs blindingly fast. Like how badmephisto does them at full speed. It scares me that someone who knows nothing of the more advanced methods can move the faces at that rate. She easily makes up for her slow and counterproductive method with her extreme speed.
 
Yes I have a tip for you F2L. Don't look up algs. Just practice it and try to understand how the pieces are put together, it is usually not that hard. Either the pieces are separated with say, a corner in a slot. Most of the time you can take it on the top layer and pair it with the edge at the same time. Other cases are a little less straight forward but you'll get them. Other common cases are the ones where the pieces are already together, but not oriented correctly, for these most of the time it consists of separating them and putting them back together the correct way, or coming back to the basic case where you have two different colors on the U face of your pair cubies and solving it with RUR' and such. Inconsistent progress is going to follow you all the way down. There are days I can average more or less 30sec, other days I am at 35, and I heard many people more or less sub20 saying this too.

About your cross, go on youtube and check badmephisto advanced cross video. What I did until about sub50 was aligning each corner edge with its face. So the blue/white ( white cross ), would be aligned so that the blue side of the edge matches the blue center of the blue face, and then I would just need to rotate it to get it down and solve the piece. What I do now, I put every corner edge on the bottom face with white on bottom so that. The only restriction is to keep the order of the edges which is a little confusing at first. You already know opposite colors I suppose, so orange opposite red and green opposite blue. And then if you remember the WCA orientation which is white on top, green on front, orange on left and red on right, you can easily remember the order once you white cross is on bottom. You just invert it, meaning orange goes to right and red to left. Also, avoid cube rotations during cross, even if you have to do a B or F move. Cross is usually not that much about tps since you can get it under 6-7 moves most of the time. Also, worst cases are the ones where you have an edge on the top layer which is inverted, meaning a R2 F2 L2 or B2 is not going to solve it. For these, the best is to use the turn of another face to orient it. Take a solved cube and perform : R F' U'. The cross is solved except two pieces. You see that if you perform an F move you're going to solve one more edge, but it'll leave you with an incorrectly oriented edge on the top layer which you absolutely wanna avoid. Therefore to solve it the most efficiently, the idea is to use this F move to orient the edge on the top layer. So you want to bring this edge on the front face to benefit from this F move that you'll have to perform anyway. So the good way to solve the case would be to do U F R'. And a last thing, try to plan as many moves as you can for the cross, even if inspection takes a minute or more. While doing slow solves you can count how many moves you perform to solve the cross. If it's more than 10-11 it's definitely bad, if its in the range 8-10 and you feel comfortable with the moves I guess it's ok ( I myself sometimes end up with 12 moves but I use one or two triggers such as R'uR'u' ( changes the orientation of the edge on RD ). So if I see that I can do a quick cross but would eventually end up with an incorrectly oriented edge on the R or L face, I use this trigger which is really fast to perform ( left version is : Lu'Lu ). This is in badmephisto's video along with other good tips.

Also, obviously you've been through a lot of things to improve lately, 4LLL, F2L, they all take some time to improve. But keep doing full solves for now, the more you go on, the more you'll understand about how pieces move, you'll find shortcuts for cross and F2L, you'll get better at drilling algs and recognizing F2L / LL cases. I bet at the moment you have a lot of unsure moves and pauses that your timer does not forget. So, until you're sub60 or sub50 I wouldn't worry too much, it'll happen so fast that you'll soon be asking about how to get sub40.


I got a sub4 cross at 32sec average, so I believe with your times your cross must be at least sub3 by now !

Edit:

Also, one more reason not to go for F2L algs : most of the time they assume the only empty slot you have is the one that you'll solve. This would be the worst case, meaning you'll drill an alg that is longer that what you could solve in 75% of the cases ( since 75% of the F2L pairs you solve are done with 2 or more empty slots ). So, knowing that you have additional empty slots gives you additional freedom to hide corners or edges. What I do to practice F2L at the moment is taking a case, and try to reproduce it, then solve it. All intuitively of course, and I repeat it until it is in muscle memory. What makes it especially hard to learn is that there is a huge amount of cases than can happen ( actually much more than the 41 ( +1 solved case ), since you can also have all these cases with empty slots, and for each case you should be able to solve it in the 4 slots ( so it's 4x41 at least, even though there are lots and lots of mirrors ). The idea on the long run, is to have them all in muscle memory so that when you find your two pieces, you can execute the moves while "looking ahead", which can only happen once you're really confident at solving F2L pairs from every angle.

Thanks! I'll definitely try to learn F2L intuitively now. :)
 
I will further support everyone's suggestion. You should learn F2L intuitively, NOT with algorithms. It is actually easier to most people to do it intuitively, and moreover, learning it intuitively will force you to learn your cube better, recognize cases/colors, and just overall enhance your solving ability. Furthermore, most people go back after he or she has learned F2L (intuitively) and will pick 3 or so cases that are difficult, and just learn the algorithms. The algorithms should only be used to enhance your abilities once you learn F2L intuitively.

Okay. Thanks. Ugh. F2L is so scary. Hahaha. :)
 
Okay. Thanks. Ugh. F2L is so scary. Hahaha. :)

Agreed. I'm working so hard on it. I use a scrambler that solves the cross so I can literally only work on the F2L. Once I solve it, I rescramble. EAch time I try to work on look ahead and tracking pieces. It's very hard for me as well to improve my F2L, but I have to if I want to get faster...and I do. :D
 
I was gonna post this in the 2x2 help thread, but idk if there is one and i didnt wanna make one so here goes. How many cases are there on a 2x2 where you have one bar solved and its in the D layer, either on the right or left side it doesnt matter. So that you only have to solve the other two corners to make a layer? Sorry if that's confusing, idk how else to explain what im trying to ask. Thanks though!
 
I was gonna post this in the 2x2 help thread, but idk if there is one and i didnt wanna make one so here goes. How many cases are there on a 2x2 where you have one bar solved and its in the D layer, either on the right or left side it doesnt matter. So that you only have to solve the other two corners to make a layer? Sorry if that's confusing, idk how else to explain what im trying to ask. Thanks though!

The first corner has 6 places it can be in, then the second corner has 5 remaining places it can be in. Each corner can be twisted in one of three ways.

6*5*3^2 = 270

Allowing for AUFs and so on would make this number smaller, of course
 
So, question. I've heard that Shengshou 4x4s are hell to assemble. How are 5x5, 6x6, and 7x7? Easier or harder?

4x4s are ok to assemble (obviously not as easy as a 3x3), 6x6 is a nightmare apparently
5x5 and 7x7 are easy
Generally, even cubes are harder because they have a mechanism that locks a particular corner to the core for stability reasons and there is a hidden layer in the middle of the cube.
 
OK, thank you everyone. I need to lube my 5, 6 and 7 but I was too scared to take them apart. Haha. If 6x6 is the only difficult one I'm not too worried, because I don't like it nearly as much as 4, 5, or 7 anyway.
 
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