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[Member Intro] I was told I should introduce myself.

FrankF

Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2020
Messages
9
[Edit] I found a short discussion under "Should I use a custom F2l Cube?." If you have anything to add, feel free to reply.

{Original Message]
I may be approaching the limit (possibly crossed the line?) of questions that I can ask in my introductory thread. I'm sure this question has been answered before, but for the life of me, my google-fu is not good enough for me to find the threads. I'm considering purchasing a black cube with stickers and taking the stickers off the last layer with the goal of helping me get better at F2L. Is this a good strategy, a horrible strategy, or an okay strategy that might or might not be worth the cost/effort?

While I'd appreciate an answer, assuming that it is already out there, learning how to find the answer myself might be even more helpful.
 
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Joined
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On a long train journey, Smashin' PBs one a stop
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[Edit] I found a short discussion under "Should I use a custom F2l Cube?." If you have anything to add, feel free to reply.

{Original Message]
I may be approaching the limit (possibly crossed the line?) of questions that I can ask in my introductory thread. I'm sure this question has been answered before, but for the life of me, my google-fu is not good enough for me to find the threads. I'm considering purchasing a black cube with stickers and taking the stickers off the last layer with the goal of helping me get better at F2L. Is this a good strategy, a horrible strategy, or an okay strategy that might or might not be worth the cost/effort?

While I'd appreciate an answer, assuming that it is already out there, learning how to find the answer myself might be even more helpful.
It's okay if you are learning F2L but once you get the hang of it, It might become pretty much useless.
Youcubers have them because they need to show clearly how to do it.
Yeah as Tabe said, Save your money.
(Sorry if my grammar's bad. English is not my first language)
 

qwr

Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2019
Messages
3,371
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I made a cross cube for practicing cross and I think it helped at start but later I just gained more experience.

I'm still puzzled as why GAN made a cross+corners cube but not a F2L cube for their monster Go series.
 

CodingCuber

Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2019
Messages
703
Location
Melbourne
WCA
2019HERR14
My name is Frank, I'm a 58 year old American college instructor, and I want to be able to reliably solve the 3x3 cube in less than one minute. I have no desire to compete. I originally learned how to solve the 3x3 about 40 years ago without instructions over a period of three months with my (then) roommate before instructions on how to solve the cube were widely available (and certainly they weren't included with our cubes). I did many things poorly, for example I would start f2l without starting with a cross first, do many cube rotations, and gripped the solved part of the cube so that I wouldn't mess up the solved part -- but was able to reliably solve the cube in less than 5 minutes.

I recently bought a speed cube (RS3M2020), and was amazed at how much better it turned than Rubik's brand or other generic cubes available in the 80's. I've been trying to unlearn some of my bad habits and just practicing for about a month has gotten me to the 2:30 average. If there is a strategic guide to getting better, telling me what to learn in what order -- I'd love to read that. Being older, I'm more interested in studying than if I were younger. On the other hand, I'm imagining that there should be something analogous to practicing scales on the piano that will help me quite a bit, because I'm not even that fast/good doing (URU'R').

I imagine that some of my renewed interest is related to my lack of social activities because of the COVID virus.

I like to play Single Player Vanilla Survival Minecraft, Cities: Skylines, and Bloons TD5. The other puzzle that I like is Sudoku. I also enjoy watching Only Connect on Youtube.
Welcome! The fact that you solved the cube without instruction sis amazing in itself. Very few people have done that.
 

FrankF

Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2020
Messages
9
yeah it's quite impressive. I wonder what method he used. I think personally I would try to get by with a corners-first method with edge commutators.
I'm saying "we" rather than "I" because I can't really say which parts I invented and taught to him, and which parts he invented and taught to me.

By the time that we were able to reliably solve the puzzle (I remember when we were very happy to get our time down to 15 minutes), our method was color neutral, Corner (one corner piece with three side pieces aligned with correct centers), Column (add a corner and two sides such that you still have two faces free to move), at which point we had to switch from intuitive solving to the use of algorithms. Then ( Next3 and Drop2 ) which together would get us to F2L. Then LLEO, and then the last part of the Beginner method without OLL. combining LLCP and LLCO while leaving the LLE unchanged. The last step after LLEO was kind of hit and miss -- and our algorithms were quite a bit longer than the beginner method. I've invented some terminology in the early steps, and honestly at the next to end it was try the penultimate algorithm then see if you're at a trigger for a final solve algorithm, if not do the penultimate algorithm again (up to I think 12 or 16 repetitions). Our LL solving was very luck dependent, when our best times were at around 5 minutes, our average times were around 12 minutes.

Also we had different terminology, for instance when doing LL, we'd call R "right down," L "Left up," and U "Top Clock" but usually communication was more visual than verbal.
 
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