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[Unofficial] Average Cuber Cubing Session 2

pipkiksass

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G perm at the end of solve 2, the cube seems a little loose. With the Weilong, you'd be surprised how tight you can have it and still cut just about any corner. From another lubicled Weilong user, I can highly recommend tightening it a little - makes it practically lockup-free.

You have a lot of rotations in F2L, sometimes > 10 per solve! 3rd F2L pair in solve 4 you do like U, U', U, U', U2' before diving in to your pair, which probably takes about 2 seconds in total. I think slowing down a little will speed you up a lot, as at the speed you're going, you fail to recognise F2L pairs, and rush to do anything. Better to go a little bit slower on the previous pair, allowing you to get an idea of what's coming up, than to waste 5 or 6 turns just doing and undoing the same setup move.

I'm just a tiny bit faster than you right now, but I know what I need to work on, and see the same bad habits in your solves, so I hope you don't mind me pointing them out. Your cross is a lot better than mine, your TPS seems higher, but I'd say its my F2L that makes me a couple of seconds faster than you.

From an objective observer, I'd agree with others in this thread: your TPS is probably faster than your brain can currently go, so you can't look ahead effectively. Do loads of slow solves at a speed where you can solve smoothly, and your brain will get used to working a step ahead of your hands. Also, try looking at your F2L inserts from alternative angles. I'm a big fan of stopping mid-solve when you come across an F2L insert you aren't 100% comfortable with, and looking up a way of doing it better, or mirrored, or from a different angle, or rotationless.

That's the joy of slow-solving, you can stop and google stuff mid-solve, and don't feel pressured to finish the solve just because the timer's running. If you come across a bad F2L case in the middle of an Ao100, you're not going to look it up and the next time you come across it, it will still take you 4 seconds because you did nothing about it. If you look up a better way of doing it, and practice it a dozen times, the next time you come across it in a timed solve it might take a while to recognise the case, or it might take you a while to get your fingers working on the new case you've memorised, but over time recognition will improve, and execution will become automatic.

You'll be surprised, but slowing down really DOES make you faster. I think your cross is good enough to get you sub 20 easily, if not faster, as are your OLL/PLL - if you slow down your cross enough to find your first F2L pair, then slow down F2L enough to look ahead, you'll be sub-20 in no time. In fact, I think you could probably average about 16-18 with very little work and your current finger speed.

Edit: just rewatched solve 2 - I'd recommend watching your cross and F2L in this, versus solve 4. Note the number of cube rotations and U turns in solve 4, versus the low number in solve 2. Also note the speed of your F2L inserts in solve 2 is slower than in solve 4, you're in less of a hurry, and you get a 15 second solve, and that's with a lockup on the G perm!
 
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slinky773

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What a detailed analysis pipkiksass haha

I never thought about doing slow solving like that before. I've been doing more and more slow solving for my F2L recently, but really only just for lookahead, not necessarily rotationless solves. That's a very different way of thinking about it. I'll be using that.

Yeah, solve 2 was really good because I got 2 pairs that were cases I'm really familiar with straight in a row. I guess ideally I should be able to solve like that whenever I see a case, so that's what I'll shoot for. Thanks for the analysis!
 

pipkiksass

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No worries, there's nothing that annoys me more than people going to the trouble of making a video for people to critique, but others still giving generic advice. I'm guessing you're averaging about 22/23 seconds? I could've told you you need to work on lookahead/F2L without even watching your video, but surely the whole point of a solve critique vid is that people give specific analysis?!

I've not heard anyone else talk about stopping mid-solve, but I'm sure others must do it. It works really well for me, and I really should do it more! I'm also trying to incorporate note-taking: planning on printing out sheets of F2L cases, and making notes on what they do to the rest of the cube as I come across them during slow solves.

For example, in solve 2 you have a triple sexy case which comes up in the UFR corner. Because you can do this without thinking, you can watch the rest of the cube... eventually (I hope!) all F2L cases should be like this. What makes it REALLY easy to look ahead in this case is the fact that none of the edges move! Eventually, with enough practice, this knowledge should allow you to not only find the next F2L pair, but also predict the case.

anyway, food for thought! Good luck with the slow practice, I hope it helps.

P.S. - found these two awesome cases today during some slow practice, give them a go:

1 - (setup R' u' R u R) R' u' R' u R - couldn't get over how smooth this case is, 5 moves where my 'standard' alg for this case involves 7 moves and 2 cube rotations! Probably a full 2 seconds faster.

2 - (setup R2 u' R2 u R2) R2 u R2 u' R2 - I've seen this in multislotting videos in the past, but comes up a surprising amount if you can spot it. That's where slow-solving helps, spotting these fast, but less obvious cases, ahead of slower, but more obvious cases (such as 2 pieces stuck together in U layer).

Enjoy!
 

sk8erman41

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No worries, there's nothing that annoys me more than people going to the trouble of making a video for people to critique, but others still giving generic advice.specific analysis?!

I couldn't agree more Pipkkiksass! Not even my video, but I really appreciate your critique. Breakdowns like this are not only way more helpful to OP but also to the community as a whole because other solvers can take notice of the aspects pointed out and also benefit from the practice advice. We all know that a great deal of information can be located "use the search function" or link to "how to practice thread" but if there were more detailed breakdowns like this it would benefit the community much more so I thank you. You also helped me out a lot in the past with your alg recommendations because you took the time to do so, so again thanks and keep it up!
 
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