Twelvangla
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Bruh WUT
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How to be sub 20
- Thread starter *LukeMayn*
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Deleted member 52530
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Help averaging constient sub-20? when im warmed up iget 17-18s but get 22s in the morning when i just wake up
Twelvangla
Member
Five months after you replied to this thread, haha. I'm having these problems too, but I guess you just need to practice more to get faster. I stuck at 20 in a point, and I had to just practiced lots to overcome the barrier. (I don't cube that much now, but I've been in the same situation, and I think this situation is normal.)
Zain_A24
Member
Having peaks and troughs in your times is perfectly normal, and happens with almost every cuber to a certain degree. What matters more is what is causing the difference in times between your first solve of the day and being fully warmed up, and what your actions will be to improve your times further. A lot of this is from practise. You won't see cubers going to comps doing their first 5 solves of the day (I haven't attending any comps to know that but there may be some people - you know who you are
)Are there any specific areas of weakness in your solves. Doing split times for each phase (4 for CFOP) would help to see where the difference is coming from, it certainly helped me a lot during my 3x3 tracking an progress, realising that my cross inspection and times were incredibly inconsistent, resulting in ineffective lookahead to first pair and a lack of "momentum" in solves.
Every cuber has their own strengths and weaknesses. It's about spotting the weaknesses and targeting them until they are no longer a weakness. Hope this helps.
GAN 356 X
Member
If you aren't already I'd highly recommend spamming TPS on F2L algs so you dont have to look at them when you start look ahead. I made this mistake, and regretted it. In terms of cross to f2l efficiency maybe try and track one corner and find the edge when you're done the cross. Hope that helps
SirCuberCat
Member
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2020
- Messages
- 21
just wondering, is forcing keyhole on an f2l slot faster than a normal algorithm? Because now i'me trying to make use of multislotting and etc
Micah Morrison
Member
1. Solve Cross on Bottom
2. Be able to solve the cross in under 8 moves every time
3. Plan out your entire cross in inspection. This may be hard at first so I would recommend not using WCA inspection
4. Be able to solve your cross blindfolded every time, except instead look at your first f2l pair whilst solving the cross.
5. Make sure that in 95% of f2l pairs you never rotate twice. If there's an f2l case where you consistently rotate twice, learn a better alg for it.
6. NEVER do a y2 rotation
7. Insert your first f2l pairs in the back slots if possible. The next best thing to do is to fill up the two slots on the left. Don't do unnecessary rotations to do this
8. Make sure every basic f2l pair solution is in muscle memory and be able to solve them blindfolded
9. Look at different f2l pairs while solving your current f2l pair
10. Be able to solve every f2l case in 8 moves or less, except a few cases where the pieces are in different layers or are matched up incorrectly which may require 11 moves.
11. Have good OLL fingertricks. Be able to execute every OLL alg you know in under 2 seconds
12. Use good OLL fingertricke. I would recommend watching Feliks' video on Cubeskills about his OLL fingertricks
13. Never rotate in the last layer. Use U moves to line up your case instead
14. Learn full PLL. It's not required to learn full OLL at this point. It's not even required to know full PLL to be sub 20 but I would recommend it.
15. Have good PLL fingertricks. Be able to execute every PLL in under 2 seconds. Feliks has a good video on PLL as well
16. Be able to predict your AUF for PLL.
EDIT: Not all of these tips need to be applied to be sub 20, but every one will make you faster.
2. Be able to solve the cross in under 8 moves every time
3. Plan out your entire cross in inspection. This may be hard at first so I would recommend not using WCA inspection
4. Be able to solve your cross blindfolded every time, except instead look at your first f2l pair whilst solving the cross.
5. Make sure that in 95% of f2l pairs you never rotate twice. If there's an f2l case where you consistently rotate twice, learn a better alg for it.
6. NEVER do a y2 rotation
7. Insert your first f2l pairs in the back slots if possible. The next best thing to do is to fill up the two slots on the left. Don't do unnecessary rotations to do this
8. Make sure every basic f2l pair solution is in muscle memory and be able to solve them blindfolded
9. Look at different f2l pairs while solving your current f2l pair
10. Be able to solve every f2l case in 8 moves or less, except a few cases where the pieces are in different layers or are matched up incorrectly which may require 11 moves.
11. Have good OLL fingertricks. Be able to execute every OLL alg you know in under 2 seconds
12. Use good OLL fingertricke. I would recommend watching Feliks' video on Cubeskills about his OLL fingertricks
13. Never rotate in the last layer. Use U moves to line up your case instead
14. Learn full PLL. It's not required to learn full OLL at this point. It's not even required to know full PLL to be sub 20 but I would recommend it.
15. Have good PLL fingertricks. Be able to execute every PLL in under 2 seconds. Feliks has a good video on PLL as well
16. Be able to predict your AUF for PLL.
EDIT: Not all of these tips need to be applied to be sub 20, but every one will make you faster.
Cody_Caston
Member
Try inspecting for longer if you inspect for like 4 seconds like i do (yes i know i need to fix that)
ProStar
Member
You can tell what he thinks is important by how many times he repeats it
Seriously though, amazing advice by Micah. Everything he said I agreed with
Cody_Caston
Member
One thing that helped me get sub 20 is doing big cubes because it helped with my lookahead
Sub1Hour
Member
I have always been more serious with big cubes than 3x3 ever since I got my first 6x6 and 7x7 back in June of 2018 (I started in April 2018), and I think that has helped me a lot with my lookahead. It's much harder to lookahead on big cubes than 3x3 since there are so many pieces and such so when I did 3x3 it felt much easier to look ahead to just F2L pairs instead of all of those centers on 5-7. I would also learn how to do intuitive F2L along with using some algs for bad cases since it makes your solves smoother and eventually you can influence other F2L pairs and OLL once you get faster.
Username: Username:
Member
When approaching sub 20, lookahead is not really a big deal at those stages, improving your F2L efficiency definitely helps, since you turn less, which makes less time for F2L and also, overtime you should generate more efficient F2L algs during solves due to experience. Learn 2LLL, I know maybe some people will say that 2LLL is not necessary during sub 20, but it definitely chops off a couple of second, maybe 3 or 2 second, but still, those are a huge improvement and step towards sub 20, it may even give you a head start when becoming sub-15.
tl;dr improve F2L efficiency and learn 2LLL, it definitely helps.
mitja
Member
Also, one handed solving stops your TPS a bit and helps for better lookahead.
Rubuscu
Member
Hello.
I was averaging well below 20 seconds a week ago. But now, my times are rising up again. Nowadays, I only get a sub-20 average of 5 after doing about 10-15 solves. This is not ideal, as I have to do so many solves before getting a sub-20 average.
I think the main reason for this is because of stupid very long pauses all the time. But still, I have not started looking ahead since it is not recommended at this level.
Is this situation common? What should I do next?
I was averaging well below 20 seconds a week ago. But now, my times are rising up again. Nowadays, I only get a sub-20 average of 5 after doing about 10-15 solves. This is not ideal, as I have to do so many solves before getting a sub-20 average.
I think the main reason for this is because of stupid very long pauses all the time. But still, I have not started looking ahead since it is not recommended at this level.
Is this situation common? What should I do next?
Skewb_Cube
Member
- Joined
- May 7, 2020
- Messages
- 324
If you're averaging around 20s then you should start looking ahead unless your efficiency isn't that good and things aren't that much into your muscle memory, if that's the case then practice your efficiency first. And your times getting higher is something that happens to me too every now and then and it's normally due to the lack of practice.
rubik2005
Member
Look ahead will make a significant difference (as long as you're not making 50 moves for each F2L pair). Think of it like eating cereal and watching TV in the morning: do you really need to watch the bowl and the spoon to make sure that it goes into your mouth? No. You can just pay attention to the TV instead.
Same thing with F2L. If you know how to make an F2L pair, don't look at it, but instead look at the rest of the cube, and at the very least track some pieces so that you have an idea of what your next move will be (which in your case this happens during the long pauses). There's a couple ways to do this:
Just because you are turning as fast as possible doesn't mean you'll have a fast solve. It's like putting on some blurry glasses which means you can't look at the cube all that well and thus worsen your look ahead. Meanwhile, turning slower (but not like 1 tps) will allow you to get a glance at the moving pieces and make it easier to track things.
Do the cross (make sure you're always doing it in ≤ 7 moves), stop, think of how you'll solve your next pair, and do it with your eyes closed. Then repeat this with each other pair. Eventually, you'll be able to focus on the other pieces since this practice will build your muscle memory, making a pair more of like an OLL where you don't even think about it.
As for OLL and PLL, 2-look OLL is definitely fine for sub-20 (I average 15s and have like 20 more to left), and you should know full PLL at this point (as well as fast executions for each of them).
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Cubing Forever
Member
(I was barely sub 20 CFOP for a brief period before switching to Mehta)
My main advice is do a lot of untimed solves and some chill turning(i.e turn in a relaxed sort of way) when you do timed solves. When you do that, try to look ahead. You'll find it difficult at first but it'll be easy later on.
Also, do this drill:
1)Go to https://cstimer.net, click on WCA and click on 3x3. Click on the dropbox next to it and select the option called cross solved.
2)Scramble the cube
3)recognize first pair
4)solve it blindfolded
5)repeat steps 4 and 5 for all F2L pairs
Do this and about 500-750 solves later you should be sub 20.
My main advice is do a lot of untimed solves and some chill turning(i.e turn in a relaxed sort of way) when you do timed solves. When you do that, try to look ahead. You'll find it difficult at first but it'll be easy later on.
Also, do this drill:
1)Go to https://cstimer.net, click on WCA and click on 3x3. Click on the dropbox next to it and select the option called cross solved.
2)Scramble the cube
3)recognize first pair
4)solve it blindfolded
5)repeat steps 4 and 5 for all F2L pairs
Do this and about 500-750 solves later you should be sub 20.
SlowerCuber
Member
I'm around the same speed of you, and I look at it in another perspective:
Roll a dice long enough, you will get 3 consecutive ace in a row. Similarly you may come at a point where you get some easy solves so get sub-20 AO5 , and that depends on luck. At one day it might be 10 solves to get sub-20 AO5, but another day maybe 100 solves. Simply looking at the "best" AO5 in a day does not mean your time is rising or dropping
However if, say you're doing like 100 solves a day, and your AO100 is rising up day by day, that might really mean you're slowing down. Maybe take a break, or do some "Chill turning" as BrodytheCuber said, or just some untimed solves, and see what went wrong in your solves.
As for lookahead, I feel the pre-requisite is to not to look at the current thing you're doing (mostly cross and F2L). @rubik2005 above made a good point: it helps to practice solving pairs blindfolded. If you can that, there's nothing to prevent you from practicing lookahead
Roll a dice long enough, you will get 3 consecutive ace in a row. Similarly you may come at a point where you get some easy solves so get sub-20 AO5 , and that depends on luck. At one day it might be 10 solves to get sub-20 AO5, but another day maybe 100 solves. Simply looking at the "best" AO5 in a day does not mean your time is rising or dropping
However if, say you're doing like 100 solves a day, and your AO100 is rising up day by day, that might really mean you're slowing down. Maybe take a break, or do some "Chill turning" as BrodytheCuber said, or just some untimed solves, and see what went wrong in your solves.
As for lookahead, I feel the pre-requisite is to not to look at the current thing you're doing (mostly cross and F2L). @rubik2005 above made a good point: it helps to practice solving pairs blindfolded. If you can that, there's nothing to prevent you from practicing lookahead
