Thanks so much for making these vids. I'm fairly new to cubing, having started in December with CFOP (although I've owned a cube, and known a 'method' for about 10 years). Unfortunately I have to sleep, otherwise I'd watch the whole series now, but I'm up to ZZF2L. The videos are looooong, but very easy to follow if you're patient and interested enough!
I didn't come to your tutorials looking to 'convert' to ZZ, but more to pick up some tips I could incorporate into my current method. I currently average about 25-28 seconds, and I know I'll never have the finger speed of some of the faster cubers, so I've been looking at ways to make my solves more efficient. I already have a dozen things I know I need to work on (like my terrible lookahead), but it never hurts to do a little research, right? ;-) I'd noticed that the best CFOP users incorporate the following 3 things that I've been interested in:
1 - x-crosses, or use some form of block-building in their first 2 layers
2 - edge control when inserting the final F2L pair, to dictate the LL edge orientation (lots of cases for marginal gain)
3 - COLL. Tricky when you have 57 OLLs!
From what I've learned so far, it looks like throwing in some edge orientation at the start of what would essentially remain a CFOP solve, I could reduce the number of possible F2L cases dramatically. Just from a quick scan of cubewhiz (
http://www.cubewhiz.com/f2l.php), to my untrained (in EO recognition) eye, it would appear that only 20 of the 41 CFOP F2L 'cases' are possible with correct edge orientation. I use intuitive F2l, and some of my cases use F or B turns, so I'd have to change a little, but looks like this small compromise would probably be worthwhile.
In addition, once I've got my EOline, I have the option to stick with CFOP and drop in my two remaining cross edges alone, or build 2x2x1s (easier because edges are correctly oriented) and effectively make either a single or double x-cross with ZZ. From here, as noted above, my two remaining F2L pairs could only be one of a possible 20 cases, and be inserted using only R/U/L moves, leaving an easy OLL. With only 7 OLL cases, COLL or even 1-look LL is then a realistic prospect.
Just using this as a sounding-board really. If anything I say is drastically wrong or misses the point completely, please feel free to correct me. From what I can see, there's no down-side to at least incorporating ZZ elements into CFOP. But then is it basically a ZZ solve (unless I use an F or B turn to insert an F2L pair and screw up my EO?).
Looking forward to watching the rest of the series when I have time. Thanks again!
