[Help Thread] How are people just faster? - pTr

pTr

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I don't get it that people are just faster, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I'm just confused.

In the Easy/Lucky/Hard/Weird Scrambles Thread, there is the scramble D2 L2 B' D2 F' R2 B2 R2 U2 R2 U2 R U F2 U' F' D2 R' D B2

I don't get how @precompsubwr got a 5.07. Ik he/she/they is/are good, but how do he/she/they and other better cubes see better solutions?

For that scramble, I found a rotationless PLL skip, but only got 8.27

y z2
U R' U' R U2' R' U R
U' R U2 R' U' R U R' U' R U R' f' L f
D R U R' U' R U R' U D'
U R U' R' U R U R' U2 R U' R'
U2 L' U' L U' L' U L U L F' L' F
U'
 
I don't get it that people are just faster, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I'm just confused.

In the Easy/Lucky/Hard/Weird Scrambles Thread, there is the scramble D2 L2 B' D2 F' R2 B2 R2 U2 R2 U2 R U F2 U' F' D2 R' D B2

I don't get how @precompsubwr got a 5.07. Ik he/she/they is/are good, but how do he/she/they and other better cubes see better solutions?

For that scramble, I found a rotationless PLL skip, but only got 8.27

y z2
U R' U' R U2' R' U R
U' R U2 R' U' R U R' U' R U R' f' L f
D R U R' U' R U R' U D'
U R U' R' U R U R' U2 R U' R'
U2 L' U' L U' L' U L U L F' L' F
U'
Practice and repetition. The more you practice advanced concepts the more apprent they become. And then it's a matter of doing thousands of solves. I mean imagine the amount of time and effort cubers like YiHeng and Tymon have put into just 3x3. That being said, some people defintiely have better pattern recognition ability than others. But ultimately hard work can beat or match skill.
 
You can test your TPS too, by taking a reconstructed 4.00 - 4.50 second solve by Tymon or Yiheng and trying to fingertrick the entire solve yourself. You will of course benefit from zero lookahead delays. Even so, most fairly good cubers will not manage to finger trick the solution in less than 7 seconds because they just aren't as nimble with the cube. An interesting exercise for your own solves is to take an average solve you did 'live', reconstruct it, and re-execute the solve, ten or twenty times and see how fast you can get without the disadvantage of lookahead.

Keep in mind that beyond TPS & lookahead, Yiheng has an inhuman ability to plan the solve in inspection and choose the best color, best XXcross, best third pair etc., while Tymon's big advantage is multi-slotting, namely that he essentially solves more than one slot at the same time.
 
 
it’s just practicing good, advanced techniques and trying to get rid of all the bad habits in solves. This comes with practice. The best practice is deliberate practice. If you want, i could help you get faster.
 
Honestly, and feel free to boo me, but the best thing I ever did at making myself faster was lookahead. Fancy fingertricks, getting better cubes, whatever. Improving lookahead and getting to the point where there are literally no pauses in your solves is aLOT more important than having stardust or whatever that lube is. Smh
 
Honestly, and feel free to boo me, but the best thing I ever did at making myself faster was lookahead. Fancy fingertricks, getting better cubes, whatever. Improving lookahead and getting to the point where there are literally no pauses in your solves is aLOT more important than having stardust or whatever that lube is. Smh
true
 
All improvement is either using fewer moves or turning faster. time = movecount/TPS + start/stop time. You can probably make an easy .1 second improvement by practicing timer starts and stops, but not much more (unless you are truly terrible at them). Decreasing movecount comes from a lot of practice and experience and time with the cube experimenting. In a CFOP context (which is where I assume you're coming from), you need to be comfortable with xcrosses (and blocks more generally), pseudoslotting, EO, multislotting and various other techniques that you can use to decrease your movecount, as well as knowing lots of algs. For example, ZBLL has become a lot more popular as people get better at forcing EO for LL. TPS is really two things. One is the raw turns per second you can do. This comes from good turning which, again, only comes from dedicated practice. Something which made me a lot faster was just drilling PLL every day for 1 or 2 months. I really should've done it for longer. That's why a lot of top 3x3ers are also really good at 2x2, because 2x2 forces you to have insane TPS. The other thing, as mentioned, is lookahead. Force yourself to lookahead as you solve so that you can spot the things that decrease your movecount. And secret thing is inspection. This allows you to find efficient solutions and removes lookahead so that you can turn quickly. If you want to be fast, you should always be pushing inspection. You can see cross? Now look for cross+1. Cross+1 is now easy? Cross+2. I think you get the picture.

The fast people all do this.

TL;DR
Get better at efficiency by speding time with the cube thinking about solutions. Also more algs help.
Get better at turning by drilling algs (not just LL).
Get better at lookahead by forcing yourself to lookahead.
Get better at inspection by forcing yourself to inspect further than is comfortable.
 
Honestly, and feel free to boo me, but the best thing I ever did at making myself faster was lookahead. Fancy fingertricks, getting better cubes, whatever. Improving lookahead and getting to the point where there are literally no pauses in your solves is aLOT more important than having stardust or whatever that lube is. Smh

For the benefit of the OP, you should share exactly which exercises you used, to improve lookahead. There are many, and some work a lot better than others. Like for example are did you practice the random scrambling while tracing pieces flying by, or did you memorize the effect of every F2L algo on all the other pieces so you knew in advance where things would end up after each pair? etc....
 
I don't get it that people are just faster, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I'm just confused.

In the Easy/Lucky/Hard/Weird Scrambles Thread, there is the scramble D2 L2 B' D2 F' R2 B2 R2 U2 R2 U2 R U F2 U' F' D2 R' D B2

I don't get how @precompsubwr got a 5.07. Ik he/she/they is/are good, but how do he/she/they and other better cubes see better solutions?

For that scramble, I found a rotationless PLL skip, but only got 8.27

y z2
U R' U' R U2' R' U R
U' R U2 R' U' R U R' U' R U R' f' L f
D R U R' U' R U R' U D'
U R U' R' U R U R' U2 R U' R'
U2 L' U' L U' L' U L U L F' L' F
U'
Your solution has a lot of moves. 59 moves for just a FOP solve. That means you could use some more work on your F2L.
 
I don't get it that people are just faster, I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I'm just confused.

In the Easy/Lucky/Hard/Weird Scrambles Thread, there is the scramble D2 L2 B' D2 F' R2 B2 R2 U2 R2 U2 R U F2 U' F' D2 R' D B2

I don't get how @precompsubwr got a 5.07. Ik he/she/they is/are good, but how do he/she/they and other better cubes see better solutions?

For that scramble, I found a rotationless PLL skip, but only got 8.27

y z2
U R' U' R U2' R' U R
U' R U2 R' U' R U R' U' R U R' f' L f
D R U R' U' R U R' U D'
U R U' R' U R U R' U2 R U' R'
U2 L' U' L U' L' U L U L F' L' F
U'
https://alg.cubing.net/?setup=D2_L2..._L-_//_F2L4 R-_U-_F-_U_F_R_U-_//_OLL/PLL_skip

Found a PLL skip in 34 moves, a 25-move improvement over your solution with just as much luck.
 
For the benefit of the OP, you should share exactly which exercises you used, to improve lookahead. There are many, and some work a lot better than others. Like for example are did you practice the random scrambling while tracing pieces flying by, or did you memorize the effect of every F2L algo on all the other pieces so you knew in advance where things would end up after each pair? etc....
This is true. I don't know if I had a specific methodology for improving lookahead, it was more actually TRYING to lookahead if that makes sense. When I'm just casually solving, I'm not thinking about if a certain pair would be more efficient to solve with a sledge rather than a sexy, I'm just going through the motions ig. That said videos like Jperms where he critiques other cubers around my times were helpful, that and the sub-x videos. Just me though and I'm still not sub-10, so there's definitely more experienced people out there :)
 
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