COLL/EPLL vs. OLL/PLL

Focus exclusively on cross and f2l for a while. Aim to have them both done in 10 seconds. Figure out your cross solution during inspection and be able to solve it with eyes closed. Ensure you are able to see any f2l pair and solve it eyes closed then work very very hard on your lookahead (metronome, slow solves, identify two pairs and solve both eyes closed). Make sure you can solve in all four slots, and work hard to reduce rotations as much as is practical.

Once your cross is sorted (can solve without looking) and relatively optimal (never more than 8 moves max, use prisma or JARCS to find and go through optimal cross solves if you just cant find it. Use as much inspection time as you like, really nail it in your head, this gets easier and thus quicker very rapidly.) start tracking a corner during the cross solve, and then progress to a corner edge pair so you can immediately get onto the f2l without pause. Always strive to turn without pause during cross+f2l, if you have to pause you are going too fast. The idea here is to get your eyes faster than your fingers. Once you are down to a 10ish F2L due to awesome lookahead your times will be no more than 18 secs in a worst case scenario (this is assuming your alg tps is relatively slow) Fingertrick and drill the hell out of them and get them all to sub 2, mostly sub 1.5. At some point during this time, learn full OLL. Also drill and fingertrick (actually you will discover its not as hard as you originally feared, its quite an easy to learn alg set, even though there are 57 of them.) Whilst doing this investigate 2 sided PLL recog.

You will notice that your cross-f2l will further improve due to the improved tps that your fingers develop from your drilling. Continue to go no faster than your brain and eyes can follow, but always bang in the last pair as fast as possible. Lookahead development is the critical factor. By this point you will be around 12-15 seconds. (hopefully). Then practice loads, borederline compulsively, always being mindful of your weakest area and continue to work on that. Get that cross down to sub2, cross+f2l to 8ish, keep going until you are great and sub10 isnt a big enough novelty to make you cheer. Keep going and you will start to average 12 ish, one day you will get that sub 10 avg of 5 you have been after. Shortly after that you will squeeze out a sub 10 avg of 12, but it will feel like forever. Dont get cocky, keep your eye on your P.B. avg of 100, that is a far clearer indicator of your skill. Graph these metrics, enjoy watching them tick down, slowly but inexorably like glaciers sweeping over the landscape of suckitude. When you hit that sub 10 avg 100, scream for joy, you are truly a cubing demon, but now you realise how much more you have to do to chase down the best of the best, so maybe then learn COLL.
 
Last edited:
Is COLL worth learning?

Is COLL worth learning when you could just learn some ZBLL or skip the OLL altogether with a VLS algorithm? Granted, there are a TON of ZBLL and VLS algs out there, making the task of learning them all rather daunting (COLL, on the other hand, only has 40+ or so), but why would I want to leave myself with a PLL alg after I do COLL when I could just skip PLL altogether? I've also noticed that a lot of the COLL algs out there are long and awkward to execute anyway (unless I'm missing something), so is COLL really worth it?
 
Is COLL worth learning when you could just learn some ZBLL or

COLL algs are also ZBLL algs, and it is actually a good idea to know a bunch of COLL before starting to learn ZBLL. There are 42 COLL cases. With a few exceptions because of symmetry, each one of those COLL cases has 12 different ZBLL cases associated with it. For example, the T orientation case (the one you would solve with r U R' U' r' F R F') has 6 different COLL cases. So if you learned 6 algs (one of which is that alg I just mentioned), then you could always force an EPLL every time you got the T case. But there are a total of 6*12 = 72 ZBLL cases for the T orientation case. If you learned one of those sets of 12, then when one particular COLL case comes up, you could 1-look the last layer, and when one of the other 5 T cases came up, you would just do COLL -> EPLL.

Anyway, if you weren't already aware of this, with a little bit of thought, my above paragraph implies something kinda cool about COLL: When you use it, you have a 1/12 chance of skipping PLL (as opposed to the normal 1/72 chance).

I've also noticed that a lot of the COLL algs out there are long and awkward to execute anyway (unless I'm missing something)

What source are you looking at for COLL? They should (mostly) be pretty nice.

Anyway, learning some or all of COLL could have a few benefits:
1. PLL will always be a U, H, or Z perm (how much of a benefit this is is subjective, as most other PLLs are very nice anyway)
2. 1/12 chance for PLL skip when you use it instead of 1/72
3. Learning more algs makes you better at learning algs and so it will be easier to learn even more algs in the future (actually making you more capable of taking on one of those larger alg sets you mention)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top