[Member Intro] Hello friends.

[Dwemble]

I got into solving on Easter day of this year (2017), when my son received a Rubik's cube in his Easter basket. I got my first solve in 2 days (using the official Rubik's guide), and it took me another 4 days learning algorithms to be able to solve it without any cheat sheets or references.

My solve time averages around 1.5 minutes,and I now practice a bit every day, and have found a few tips on how to get faster, but I've pretty well plateaued. I intentionally learned to solve by memorizing the fewest number of algorithms, but needless to say it is very inefficient.

Therefore, I want to find the speedsolving method that works best for me. I was glad to find this forum with people as interested in the subject as I am. I look forward to hearing and learning from all of you.

Oh, and so far I've only done 3x3.........for now.

Thanks for reading.

 

[CornerCutter]

Welcome to the forums!

 

[Solvador Cubi]

Hi Dwemble,

If you're interested in learning algorithms, and starting with just a few for CFOP....

I assembled a 3x3 intermediate method called FIXLL that has a 4-Look Last Layer. My goal for it was to use the fewest number of algorithms to memorize instead of the 16 mostly unrelated ones. It uses only 9 main algorithms (in different ways) to complete the last layer in at most 4 steps.

It is set up as a "bring you own F2L" and really just focuses on the last layer.

Here's a link to the one-page quick reference guide:
http://solvexio.cf/app/#/FIXLL_OnePage

I hope some of that will help you!
Solvador Cubi

 

[xyzzy]

Welcome!

If you're still using a Rubik's brand cube, upgrading to a speedcube will likely drop your times by a significant amount without any extra effort, along with making it easier to improve. (Cheaper ones include the MF3RS and the Thunderclap, which are both under 10 USD.)

At your current level, you don't actually need a lot of algorithms to become faster. Fluency with the algorithms you do know is a lot more important, and is probably enough to get your times below 50 seconds. (But ultimately, you do have to learn algs to get really fast. There's no escaping that.)

Intuitive F2L is good to know, if you're currently doing layer-by-layer. If intuitive F2L looks too daunting, there are simpler variants you can use, such as keyhole F2L, which are still huge improvements over basic LBL.

As an alternative, you can also look into the Roux method, which uses fewer algs than the other big speedsolving methods (CFOP and ZZ (and Petrus)). Roux is largely about building blocks, so there aren't really "algs" to be used for most of the solve, and it also has a lower move count than CFOP and ZZ.