[Help Thread] CFOP Discussion

Stuck at a road block

ok so imgoing to try to keep this short, but forgive me if i babble off topic. About 3 weeks ago my f2l finally sped up, and i learned full
pll. i average about 33 seconds since then, and i cant seem to get faster. i practice alot, and by alot i mean a good 75 or more solves a day. my breakdown goes something like this: cross: 3-5 sec f2l: 14-18 sec oll(2 step): 5-6 sec pll: 3-4 sec. im not really sure what i should focus on improving, but i feel like my f2l may bea bit slow, since i do pause alot. i was tying to learn look ahead for a weekor two,but to no avail. if anything it seems to make me pause more, and go seven hundred times slower. i was also thinking of lsarning full oll, but that wouldtake a while, plus the max it'll do for me now is 2-3 sec anyway. what do you guys think? also what are your breakdowns for those of you who average about the same as me?
 
Learn F2L algs for stuck pieces to lower the move count. Make sure your last layer is quick, perform each PLL under 3 seconds.

Looking ahead also helps a bit, make sure after you master your F2L (you can recognise any F2L case within a split second, and solve it without looking) you can start lowering your TPS to help you look ahead.

It's also helpful to learn some easy OLLs.

You should solve the cross on the bottom for an easier F2L transition. You should definitely solve the cross under 5 seconds. Try to memorise as much of the cross as you can in inspection, and try not to look at the cross pieces while you execute the cross, instead looking around for your first pair.

The breakdown for sub 30, I would say:

Cross: <5 seconds
F2L: 15 seconds
2LOLL: 4 seconds
PLL: 3 seconds

Hope this helped :)
 
Um I take it by your numbers that your f2l total time is the sum of the times you have written as cross and f2l (as cross is actually part of your f2l). Given your times that means you f2l takes 17-23s on average with a LL of 8-10s.

Given this your LL is fine for your current speed and the problem lies within your f2l. I'm sure you've read this elsewhere but what will improve your times is to SLOW DOWN YOUR TURNING SPEED DURING F2L. This seems very counter intuitive but the goal is to be able to minimise the number of moves you are using during f2l and minimise pauses between pairs. I promise you it will drop your times down significantly.

I average 24s currently with CFOP 3LLL just as you do and I too was stuck around the 33 mark for a while. I now turn much slower and look ahead during f2l and It's rare I ever get a time of 30+s anymore (maybe one in 100 solves). You'll be surprised just how slow you can turn to get your times below your current time. I found it helpful not timing for a while as I struggled to keep up with slow turning when a timer was running but that might just be me.

On a side note just also check your move count for the entire f2l it should be around 30-40 (I think I'm sure someone will confirm) If it's significantly more you may want to look at more efficient ways of inserting pairs. Hope this helps.
 
Would you mind answering my question: are the time you stated there additive? Like: 2 - 4 weeks + 2 - 4 weeks + 4 months +
 
Sad 4u said:
ok so imgoing to try to keep this short, but forgive me if i babble off topic. About 3 weeks ago my f2l finally sped up, and i learned full
pll. i average about 33 seconds since then, and i cant seem to get faster. i practice alot, and by alot i mean a good 75 or more solves a day. my breakdown goes something like this: cross: 3-5 sec f2l: 14-18 sec oll(2 step): 5-6 sec pll: 3-4 sec. im not really sure what i should focus on improving, but i feel like my f2l may bea bit slow, since i do pause alot. i was tying to learn look ahead for a weekor two,but to no avail. if anything it seems to make me pause more, and go seven hundred times slower. i was also thinking of lsarning full oll, but that wouldtake a while, plus the max it'll do for me now is 2-3 sec anyway. what do you guys think? also what are your breakdowns for those of you who average about the same as me?
Click to expand...

Sad 4u I just recently broke sub 30 and heres how my solves use to break down before sub 30

Cross+F2L around 20 seconds (plus or minus a few)
OLL+PLL around 10 seconds

now that Im sub 30 my break down is more like this

Cross+F2L around 15-17 seconds
OLL+PLL around 8-9 seconds
Ive gotten a couple sub 20 solves both were thanks to a pll skip and ive had up to a 20.91 single without a pll or oll skip. My biggest word of advice is your lookahead I know I had problems with it too(and I still do) but you need to either learn to look ahead alot better or get better at just tracking your next step.(I tend to relly on a fast tps while semi-tracking my pieces if I could look ahead better im sure I could break sub 20)

get all of your PLLs down to sub 3 seconds for execution at least (the only ones I currently cant consistently sub 3 are an N perm and a R perm and I can sub 2 a good chunk of my PLL's and not one has been sub 1 yet)

Also try to get you transfer from one step to the other to be smooth too. Cross to F2L should easily be able to just flow into one another and F2L to OLL should flow easily too OLL to PLL there could be problems with recognition but just try to flow from one step to the next as good as possible.

anyway thats all the advice I can think of giving you lol. Good luck and I hope you can break through that road block I know it took me about a month break from cubing to break sub 30 barrier.
 
Sad 4u said:
ok so imgoing to try to keep this short, but forgive me if i babble off topic. About 3 weeks ago my f2l finally sped up, and i learned full
pll. i average about 33 seconds since then, and i cant seem to get faster. i practice alot, and by alot i mean a good 75 or more solves a day. my breakdown goes something like this: cross: 3-5 sec f2l: 14-18 sec oll(2 step): 5-6 sec pll: 3-4 sec. im not really sure what i should focus on improving, but i feel like my f2l may bea bit slow, since i do pause alot. i was tying to learn look ahead for a weekor two,but to no avail. if anything it seems to make me pause more, and go seven hundred times slower. i was also thinking of lsarning full oll, but that wouldtake a while, plus the max it'll do for me now is 2-3 sec anyway. what do you guys think? also what are your breakdowns for those of you who average about the same as me?
Click to expand...

Looking at you average 2LOLL and PLL times, I would say they seem fine to get to sub-25. The cross should be done under five seconds consistantly, and I would recommend you practice it on the D face as I remember myself solving cross on the U face instead until I averaged 23 seconds. Transition by then is quite difficult.

So far, I haven't learned any stuck piece cases. For F2L, I would practice move efficiency (try to get full F2L including cross under 35-40 moves), and also practice turning slower and looking for other F2L pieces while solving the current one. It is also helpful to be able to recognise different cases during F2L faster, but this will come naturally.

So here is my personal breakdown of a solve to get sub-30:

Cross: 5s
F2L: 15s
2LOLL: 5s
PLL: 4s
 
Ok so I was laying in bed watching badmephistos video on practicing f2l and I think I have been doing it wrong and that is why my times have not been increasing as fast as I hoped. When I practice I try and do f2l
Without any cube rotations, this means I'm using my thumbs... Is this completely wrong? I know they are slower than using my fingers but am I losing a lot of speed using them instead of rotating the cube?
 
Pokerizer said:
Ok so I was laying in bed watching badmephistos video on practicing f2l and I think I have been doing it wrong and that is why my times have not been increasing as fast as I hoped. When I practice I try and do f2l
Without any cube rotations, this means I'm using my thumbs... Is this completely wrong? I know they are slower than using my fingers but am I losing a lot of speed using them instead of rotating the cube?
Click to expand...

I suggest you use as many cube rotations as you like at the beginning while you are learning how to do intuitive F2L (that's what I did). Once you get used to pairing up corner and edge pieces and can do it without any problem at all, try rotating the cube less. Almost all top cubers still rotate during F2L to get better finger tricks. Once you are trying to reduce F2L rotations, don't do any moves that are hard to do, for example, I don't do any 'B' moves. F2L should normally give good finger tricks (R, U, some Ds and some Fs) so practice with your fingers and you'll get used to the moves.

Note that when you start off practicing F2L, your times will be worse than what you had with Beginner's method. That's normal. Just keep at practicing F2L and you'll start noticing big improvements.
 
Last edited:
Penguinstorm300 said:
I suggest you use as many cube rotations as you like at the beginning while you are learning how to do intuitive F2L (that's what I did). Once you get used to pairing up corner and edge pieces and can do it without any problem at all, try rotating the cube less. Almost all top cubers still rotate during F2L to get better finger tricks. Once you are trying to reduce F2L rotations, don't do any moves that are hard to do, for example, I don't do any 'B' moves. F2L should normally give good finger tricks (R, U, some Ds and some Fs) so practice with your fingers and you'll get used to the moves.

Note that when you start off practicing F2L, your times will be worse than what you had with Beginner's method. That's normal. Just keep at practicing F2L and you'll start noticing big improvements.
Click to expand...

I've been doing F2l for a while now but now im working on speed, I'm comfortable pairing and placing from any angle but I think that using F and B moves have been slowing me down alot. My ao12 is almost under 45 secs.
 
Any people who have been doing F2L for a while and are starting to feel comfortable with it but still are not seeing great improvements in your times please remember that you have TWO hands! It is easy to reduce cube rotations by using your non-dominant hand to insert pairs and begins to drop your f2l times quite quickly (although not by a huge amount).
 
See some recognition tips from YouTube
I recommend pll algs and recognition from Techtopia.

Where can i learn some oll algs?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hey, just wanted to say that the videos about sanding and breaking in are not available anymore. Apart from that, nice thread, thanks. :)
 
Timing Help!

Hey everyone,

I am averaging 36 seconds per solve with my 3x3x3 dayan zhanchi. I use fridrich f2l, 2 look oll, and 2 look pll. Is this a good time using this method? Can someone post times that I should be getting per step in order to average sub-30? (I am learning 1 look pll so my average will go down once i learn them)
 
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