Not sure how to progress from here

[delanvital]

Hi all,

Edit: I have gone over the various introductionary stuff in forum PM + searched the forum + seen vids here etc.

Me: I am brand spanking new at this. I've been at it for 2 weeks, using what I think is the LBL-method (white cross etc. down to last layer). I can do the cube in 1m 23s on a good day. I average 1m 50s or so. I spend about 10-30 seconds sorting the cross (which must be AGES to you guys) which is horrible it seems + I spend quite some time doing the last layer - I basically do the stuff right, I think, but end up with so darn many turns it feels like ages. I've started using finger tricks and although not really fast, they do work quite well for me. I do flip the cube around a lot compared to you guys, to find some specific cube I need to solve a side.

My goal: My work takes lots of time and I have little time for cubing so my goals is less ambitious than what ppl do here - to get sub 1 minute over the next three months. I basically try to kill 10 mins every day on the commute

My problem: I doubt I can get sub 1 minute without making some other change to my approach. If I did an optimal solve now, I think I can do 1m 15 seconds. Thus, I have spent some time searching this forum + looking at videos of ppl doing cubes (in the sticky thread in particular).

My question: I wonder if it would be a good idea to try and move into Friedrich - or should I do something else? How to get sub 1 minute? Better to optimise what I know, perhaps you need to be better to fully utilise Friedrich?

 

[teller]

Hi, welcome. I think Fridrich is great for beginners. You can focus on any aspect of your solve and "upgrade" it without really having to unlearn anything. Start here: http://badmephisto.com/ Find just one thing to focus on at a time and you'll always have something to do on the train.

 

[DeeDubb]

I was in your situation, with the same goal about 2 weeks ago. I was using only the beginner method. The great thing is, you can pick up any method you want because you aren't really set in anything. I chose Roux because it looked fun, and even a lot of CFOP people confess they wish they had chosen Roux before it was too late to change. You should check out this thread:

http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ner-s-Guide-to-Choosing-a-Speedsolving-Method

Also, you can get under a minute using the beginner method with enough practice. I really love Roux though

 

[fatymid]

Hi, welcome. I think Fridrich is great for beginners. You can focus on any aspect of your solve and "upgrade" it without really having to unlearn anything. Start here: http://badmephisto.com/ Find just one thing to focus on at a time and you'll always have something to do on the train.

Doesn't Frindrich has a lot of theory to memorize?

 

[pipkiksass]

Doesn't Frindrich has a lot of theory to memorize?

Not really. You can get by with as few as 4 last later algorithms (maybe 5 actually). The more you know, the more efficient you'll be.

Have you tried the beginners guide to choosing a speedcubing method thread?

 

[IRNjuggle28]

I was in your situation, with the same goal about 2 weeks ago. I was using only the beginner method. The great thing is, you can pick up any method you want because you aren't really set in anything. I chose Roux because it looked fun, and even a lot of CFOP people confess they wish they had chosen Roux before it was too late to change. You should check out this thread:

http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/s...ner-s-Guide-to-Choosing-a-Speedsolving-Method

Also, you can get under a minute using the beginner method with enough practice. I really love Roux though

YES. Please, do not make the mistake of thinking that you need to use CFOP. I, among many others, wish I'd started with Roux after the beginner's method. As you can probably guess from my signature. Haha.

 

[stoic]

Learning F2L will slow you down at first, but pay back a big dividend later. That's what got my times under the 1-min mark.
As others have said, other approaches are available! (Including colour neutral).

 

[ILMZS20]

dude you can get to even 40 seconds so incredibly fast. of course you will do alot of turns and rotations with beginner method at this point. to get a faster cross just try to put the pieces on the yellow (so basically the top) and then just insert them thats probably the easiest way and fast to execute eventhough its not that effective. later you can learn advanced cross (there is not too much about it, its easy to learn, but hard to mater) and yes you definitely should learn friedrich. also i dont think getting colour neutral is really worth that much. it will get you faster for sure, but really not that much just set you up a good cross and f2l pair more often, however there are tons of things that are way more important and make you way faster at your point. what you should do is learn f2l. its intuitive and at first seems really hard and slow, but within short time you will be way faster with it. so yeah, basically learn f2l, advanced cross and 2 look last layer after that. you should get sub 40 with that and some practice.

 

[ILMZS20]

YES. Please, do not make the mistake of thinking that you need to use CFOP. I, among many others, wish I'd started with Roux after the beginner's method. As you can probably guess from my signature. Haha.

if you think roux is that amazing then change? i dont get why is would be not possible anymore or something just because you would be slower at first.

 

[MM99]

Don't forget to look at ZZ too there's more than two good methods out there but ZZ might be difficult to learn given the limited time you have to practice

 

[IRNjuggle28]

if you think roux is that amazing then change? i dont get why is would be not possible anymore or something just because you would be slower at first.

I think that for 3x3, Roux is a much more interesting method, but I solve mostly big cubes. Mostly 5x5 and 7x7. And Roux doesn't work for those because of the reliance on M moves. I did learn almost all of the Roux method and I'm going to learn it the rest of the way, but I spend so little time on 3x3 that it's just not worth learning a new method for it. The main reason I want to learn Roux is so I can teach it to people who are looking for a speedsolving method that's faster than beginners. I do think Roux is that amazing compared to CFOP. It's just not the right method for me to invest that much time on.

 

[Infil]

As a relatively new cuber who initially struggled to break 2 minutes, but am now averaging low 40s using beginner's method with 2 look OLL and 2 look PLL, here were my biggest speed improvements:

-1) Have a good cube. Hopefully you are using a good speed cube and not a Rubik's brand or something similar.

1) Doing the cross faster. I'm not color neutral (I always build a white cross) but you should use your 15 second inspection time to plan at least two white pieces. You should make sure you can move the pieces without them being aligned to their centers; as long as you build them in order, you can just move the U face at the end to align. If you have white on top, the counterclockwise order is BOGR (could use something silly to remember it, like "booger"). Learn to recognize certain patterns, like... if you ever see B/G or O/R pieces on opposite sides of the same face, you can bring them both up with L and R turns (maybe a U turn in between, depending on orientation) and be half done immediately. If you get lucky with your cross, you should be able to built it in 3 or 4 seconds, but if your average cross is 15 seconds, you should focus most of your effort here. Spend some time doing cross solves off the clock, then scrambling the cube again. See if you can start to build your first two pieces in 3 or 4 moves total.

2) Inserting your second layer edges faster. This is three phases: a) locate your first piece in the top layer quickly, b) move it to where it needs to go without necessarily having to align the center and "move away", and c) taking a quick glance and seeing what piece in the 2nd layer you are going to displace when you insert (if it doesn't have yellow on it, immediately find and use this piece next). To expand on point b), all you really need to look at is whether the color on top is *opposite* (blue <-> green, red <-> orange) the color of the center it's currently over (since that's what would happen if you aligned the centers and "moved away"). If it is, you don't need to move this piece at all, you just have to rotate to the correct face and begin applying the algorithm. Eventually you'll also learn other cues, like if the color on top is the same color as the 2nd layer center, then you immediately rotate U2 (I like to rotate it "through" the other color so I'm looking at the right face to begin the rest of the algorithm).

3) Finger tricks. You don't need to be able to do every algorithm optimally, but you should be flicking the U face with your index fingers always, and you should probably practice a few of the common ones so you can do them well (I would start with 2nd layer edge insert, sune for OLL, and the A perm during the PLL stage).

Good luck!