[Help Thread] Beginners Method Discussion thread

[Ellis]

Im averaging 1 minute 30 seconds using cross then drop corners to solve first layer, then R U R U R U' R' U' R' and R' U' R' U' R' U R U R to drop middle layers, and looking at printed pages of OLL/PLL to solve the LL. Is this a solve that the time could be dropped to the sub 45? I am at a toss up between this method and the keyhole (the keyhole is a little crazy looking when I try to swing all the layers around to get the keyhole is the correct position) obviously that would just need practice.

I'm confused, are you asking if doing 4 corners layer-by-layer is enough to sub-45, or doing this with OLL/PLL? Sub-45 is possible with literally any method if you have enough practice. I would suggest just learning keyhole, or even start F2L, neither of which are particularly difficult. I started solving the cube with keyhole and never did my layer-by-layer with four corners before edges, it isn't hard. As for the algorithms, just doing 2-look OLL and 2-look PLL would be more than enough to reach your goal with sufficient practice, and that's only like 12 algs (too lazy to count).

 

[AvGalen]

I'd say learn Fridrich with F2L and 4-look-LL and then practise, practise, practise...

No, that is a good way to get a sub 45 average "fast". But simply getting intuitive F2l will take longer than getting fast with beginners layer-by-layer

And 4 look OLL requires 3+7+2+4 is 16 algs that all need to be learned and trained. For getting sub 45 single you only need 4 alg OLL and a somewhat lucky solve where you skip edge OLL, get Sune or anti-sune and a U-perm

 

[bundat]

With Fridrich intuitive F2L,and 4-Look LL, it usually takes 1 month (more or less) to achieve sub-45. If you manage to get comfortable with intuitive F2L and have already memo'ed all the 4LLL algs, chances are, you're INSTANTLY sub-45. At least, that's what happened with me.

As from what I've read from twistypuzzles somewhere, normal people with no prior experience take at least 6 months to get good with Petrus. I think it requires more experience to learn the steps (block-building is hard to grasp at first, and so is EO, and the F2L case [yes, it has a Fridrich F2L step, the last slot] requires you to learn F2L as well, while being very restricting for beginners because edges are already oriented and there are no empty slots). Wow... I never realized myself how advanced the concepts of it are until I listed them down.

 

[mcciff2112]

i would recommend This video and see if you understand F2L. give it a try. it takes a while to get used to but your times will drop significantly if you practice it for a few weeks. i dont think i was able to get sub 45s consistently without using f2l, but that was a while ago and i cant really remember.

just out of curiosity, what do you get if you win?

 

[Ellis]

I'd say learn Fridrich with F2L and 4-look-LL and then practise, practise, practise...

No, that is a good way to get a sub 45 average "fast". But simply getting intuitive F2l will take longer than getting fast with beginners layer-by-layer

I feel like that is a common problem with beginners. If your ultimate goal is really to just average sub-45 as quickly as possible, sure, just don't learn anything new and practice like hell. But most people will have a new goal once they get sub-45, and when they realized that they've just worked only on doing an incredibly simple method as fast as possible that whole time, they'll see that there are other places that they could have spent their time more wisely. I only say this because this was my experience... I really worked hard on improving my ineffiecient last layer and keyhole method. When I moved on, I deeply regretted spending so much time on simple methods because the faster methods ended up not being nearly as difficult as I had imagined.

 

[blgentry]

I think AVGalen is the wise man in this thread. The question is about how to get to a time of 45 seconds as fast as possible. I think he's probably right about using LBL to get there, and just drilling the hell out of it.

Personally, I didn't learn LBL until *after* I already knew F2L and 4LLL. But it took me over a week just to "get" F2L, and another few days to understand a simple LL method. To get sub 45... Let's just say it was a LOT longer than that.

For the long run, F2L and last layer methods with lots of algs are clearly the way to go. But I think AVGalen is right in that, if you practice a lot, you can optimize a solution with a 4 alg LL, and simple LBL techniques to get there as quickly as possible.

The only thing I would point out to Galen is that the "challenge" doesn't seem to be for a single solve. It seems to be for an average. But I may be misreading the OP's posting.

Brian.

 

[Ellis]

Ah yes, please excuse my ignorant post (I seem to have been doing that a lot recently here). Sub-45 IS the goal. I was mainly replying to the OP's latest post and forgot the purpose of the thread. In that case, I would probably agree with AvGalen, although not about the part about *maybe* doing keyhole, I would actually go for that. Even if it seems difficult now, I think it would pay off to have the extra edge.

 

[bundat]

I dunno... I could do F2L fluently after about 3-4 days, and I could do 4LLL right off the bat (reading the algs off of a piece of paper) after reading Macky's short guide. I think learning the basics of what you need "within a week" isn't too shabby for "as fast as possible".

I think the problem why a lot of people think it takes too long to learn intuitive F2L is that most people try to figure out intuitive F2L on their own. What I did was print out the cubestation F2L algs, and refer to it each time for each F2L case, but study how the case works instead of memorizing the alg. And within 3-4 days, as I said, I didn't need to look at the printout anymore.

And then, there's also being intimidated by the amount of algs of LL, or how difficult intuitive F2L seems at first. All I can say is, "seriously, just try it". It's not hard. It's not "too complex" for simple minds, even a 6 year old girl could do it.

 

[brunson]

If the goal is to break 45 seconds as fast as possible, I'd recommend keyhole over F2L. AvG has an excellent video on youTube and, though I couldn't find the posts, I've seen a couple of people pointed out here that can sub-25 (maybe even sub-20) with keyhole as their primary method.

Edit: Guy that claims a 21 second average with keyhole - http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showpost.php?p=143282&postcount=31

 

[badmephisto]

Good 3x3 Beginner's Method Tutorials?

So I just watched my Beginner's method tutorial and decided that it is garbage, and I am embarrassed that I have it on my channel. Yes its better than many other tuts I saw already, but still not even close to what it could be.

My question is this: is there a good Beginner's method tutorial on YouTube? Did someone find one that you would consider very good? Which one is it? What are the best ones out there?

I think if there should be one cubing tutorial on YouTube that is to be flawless, it should be the Beginner's Method tutorial. And I am willing to spend a lot of time remaking my Beginner's method tuts to absolute perfection, if there isn't something very good already (with both good educational approach, and the correct method taught).

My second question is: Can we all even agree on the best beginner's method? I think there are some qualities it must possess:
1. It should be easy to learn, and involve algorithms that are few in numbers, or very easy to learn
2. It should be possible to get good times with it
3. It should be easy to transfer from it to Fridrich

What other points do you think we could add to that? Is there a webpage that you think has a very good method? Even if the presentation is crappy? I think so far the best method is the one on Joels page, at

http://solvethecube.110mb.com/index.php?location=simple_solution
Even though there are small parts that I would change in it. For example orientation of edges should use f R U R' U' f' for the adjacent edge flip, since thats so similar to the opposite edge flip F R U R' U' F', and therefore MUCH easier to learn. And Why are the SUNE and ANTI-SUNE images rotated so that the correctly oriented corner is not at the same spot always??? I know I'm extremely picky

I just think we should absolutely nail down the Beginner's method, if anything, and I wanted to hear other peoples thoughts. Recap:
Two questions really:
1. are there good videos already?
2. what is the best beginner's method, regardless of whether or not someone taught it before, and can we absolutely agree on that.

[edit]
3. one more thing: what do you think is the best format for the tutorial? One single large video, like my 30 minute BLD solving tutorial? A series of 3 10 minute videos? Or a series of 7-8 videos, one for every step?

 

[ChrisBird]

3. one more thing: what do you think is the best format for the tutorial? One single large video, like my 30 minute BLD solving tutorial? A series of 3 10 minute videos? Or a series of 7-8 videos, one for every step?

While, as most know, I'm not good at making tutorials, I think I could put a little opinion into this.

I would think that the points you said were correct, but the "easy to transfer to fridrich" shouldn't be as important. This is because some people are searching youtube just so they can "get the damn thing solved" (quote from a message), and not have any need to get faster.

As for your last point, which I quoted, I think a series of videos is best, as it makes for easy to find the exact step someone is looking for. If someone were to learn, then forget F2L, they wouldn't want to watch through 15 minutes of tutorial, just to get to the part with that in it.

However, in the 30 minute video idea, you could just put in the description "0:00: Introduction, 1:24: Step 1: the Bottom Cross" etc, and that would allow people to skip the part they needed.

I hope this helps, even just a little =]

 

[Ton]

I know one method

solvecube()
{
begin
while not solved make random turn
end
}

 

[cookingfat]

Although I think that your F2L and BLD videos are the best in their category, I do think that AVGs Beginner Tutorial is better. He explains it really well and it's what I use to teach people to solve the cube. But I agree, there are not many out there that are so easy to understand, so it would be great if you did another one.

 

[MichaelErskine]

Aarnaud VanGalen's Beginner's Tutorial FTW \o/ -- I always recommend this one. I would expect that you've already seen and considered it though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV94kgdHw-4

EDIT:

3. one more thing: what do you think is the best format for the tutorial? One single large video, like my 30 minute BLD solving tutorial? A series of 3 10 minute videos? Or a series of 7-8 videos, one for every step?

How much do you think a beginner can take in from one video? If it is designed for repeated viewing then it needs to be instructional without becoming boring. The target audience might be the type of learner who is serious about speedsolving in which case they will stick with whatever is provided (and perhaps they already do this with the videos that are already available). If the beginners method is just a stepping stone toward something faster then as long as some light cube theory is provided and no bad habits are introduced then almost anything will do!

I started cubing last year and learned from many sources - written printable instructions were much better that videos for my learning process.

 

[tfkscores]

Can you check out my beginners tutorial? I dont think its that good i wanna know if i should just take it down.

 

[Escher]

http://www.ryanheise.com/cube/beginner.html

is nice, I learned from it and have taught quite a few people using the exact same method.

 

[Sa967St]

one more thing: what do you think is the best format for the tutorial? One single large video, like my 30 minute BLD solving tutorial? A series of 3 10 minute videos? Or a series of 7-8 videos, one for every step?

probably a series of 3 10 minute videos. I don't think 'twas a good idea for you to upload your BLD tutorial as one long video, since it may have been frusterating for some people to search through the whole thing just to find one part they're looking for.

 

[StachuK1992]

I personally thought that the long video was a great idea.
That way I could just wait for one window to buffer while getting some food, come back, and not have to deal with waiting for further things to buffer or change videos.

Plus, it's probably easier to deal with the comments that way.

 

[ThatGuy]

I never noticed this but for second layer there are two beginners methods second layers you can use that will influence your type of f2l and will lead to really bad solutions for some cases.
what do I mean?
For 2nd layer, you find and edge on the top not containing U colors. You line the F sticker with the center and turn U face away from the U color's center. (assume you are turning clockwise) then you do either R U R' (rotate) U' L' U' L
OR
R U' R' (rotate) U' L' U' L
The first way prepares the edge for insertion while the second way pairs the edge first and then inserts it.

 

[Sa967St]

My question is this: is there a good Beginner's method tutorial on YouTube? Did someone find one that you would consider very good? Which one is it? What are the best ones out there?

My second question is: Can we all even agree on the best beginner's method? I think there are some qualities it must possess:
1. It should be easy to learn, and involve algorithms that are few in numbers, or very easy to learn
2. It should be possible to get good times with it
3. It should be easy to transfer from it to Fridrich

I liked your tutorial :confused: It's much better than all of other ones that I've seen.

For example orientation of edges should use f R U R' U' f' for the adjacent edge flip, since thats so similar to the opposite edge flip F R U R' U' F', and therefore MUCH easier to learn. And Why are the SUNE and ANTI-SUNE images rotated so that the correctly oriented corner is not at the same spot always??? I know I'm extremely picky

here are the sune and antisune cases, from all 4 angles:

oriented corner at URF: R' U2 R U R' U R, L' U' L U' L' U2 L
oriented corner at UFL: R U R' U R U2 R', L U2 L' U' L U' L'
oriented corner at ULB: L' U2 L U L' U L, R' U' R U' R' U2 R
oriented corner at UBR: L U L' U L U2 L', R U2 R' U' R U' R'

unfortunately none of these algs are similar enough to each other