[Help Thread] Intuitive F2L and mirror blocks, any tips?

[Cristobal]

After watching some videos on YT, I'm starting to get familiarized with intuitive F2L applied to regular 3x3x3 cubes.

Having recently discovered mirror blocks cubes, I'm trying to learn intuitive F2L on them, starting the cross either by the thinnest or the thickest pieces. I must say it's rather challenging... However, both thicknesses are confusing anyway. Intuitively, it seems like edges and corners need to be correctly oriented (dimension-wise) before the moves/algs, because they need to match in width and length (instead of colours like on a regular cube).

So, are there any tips to learn intuitive F2L applied to mirror blocks?

On a other note, in the long term, becoming depth neutral would be cool too.

 

[joshsailscga]

My advice:
Don't try to learn intuitive F2L by doing it on mirrorblocks, if that's what you are saying you're doing. It's much more understandable to get it solidified in your brain using colors first. If you are trying to speedsolve mirrorblocks as your end goal, depth neutral is completely out. It is impractical both in ease of recognition and in actual fingertrickiness, especially for LL. I would suggest focusing solely on the thin cross, as thick LL is very easy both in terms of recog and in LL alg ability.
As far as intuitive F2L goes, start with the thin cross and then learn each separate pair and how to recog the pieces for each of them. There's a huge blocky pair, a smaller blocky pair, a big thin pair, and a small thin pair. With time and practice, each of these will stand out to you almost as easily as blue is distinct from red. Slow solves are key for this, don't try to spam TPS. Hope that helps. I'm a big mirrorblocks fan, if you didn't know

 

[Cristobal]

My advice:
Don't try to learn intuitive F2L by doing it on mirrorblocks, if that's what you are saying you're doing. It's much more understandable to get it solidified in your brain using colors first. If you are trying to speedsolve mirrorblocks as your end goal, depth neutral is completely out.

No no, basically I'm just trying to make the most of the mirror blocks cube, hence the intent to solve it with both thick and thin blocks cross, but absolutely no speed solving involved. As for intuitive F2L, it's because I'm learning them on coloured cube that I decided to apply the same principles on the mirror blocks cube, which seems to be harder.

It is impractical both in ease of recognition and in actual fingertrickiness, especially for LL. I would suggest focusing solely on the thin cross, as thick LL is very easy both in terms of recog and in LL alg ability.
As far as intuitive F2L goes, start with the thin cross and then learn each separate pair and how to recog the pieces for each of them. There's a huge blocky pair, a smaller blocky pair, a big thin pair, and a small thin pair. With time and practice, each of these will stand out to you almost as easily as blue is distinct from red. Slow solves are key for this, don't try to spam TPS. Hope that helps. I'm a big mirrorblocks fan, if you didn't know

OK, thanks, I'll to put into practice your precious advice. Although usually apprehending quite well geometrical forms and 3D in general (architect as a profession), anticipating the way blocks will match in 3D instead of colours is way more complex. I guess it'll come with time.

On an other note and since you're an expert: I use two mirror blocks, the silver stickers/black hardware one and the dark grey stickers/black hardware. Obviously, contrast is much better with silver stickers on black hardware (shapes stand out better). On the other hand, contrast between texture/grainy blocks on the dark grey one is better. Which kind of finish (silver vs dark grey) do you think is better? .

Do you practice blindsolving too? The grainy cube has a substantial advantage when it comes to blind solving and centres rotation I guess

 

[SenorJuan]

Seeing as you're not speedsolving it, keep the first two layers simple:
Cross, three first-layer corners, keyhole three middle-layer edges in, then solve the last edge & corner either 'one piece at a time' , or as a 'non-matched F2L pair', which isn't as hard as you'd think, as there's only one corner and one edge to choose from.

And regarding the centre-piece rotation, I'm sure most people don't consider it, especially when solving unsighted. Some mirrorblocks don't have stickers, I've seen a plain pink one, for example.

 

[Cristobal]

Seeing as you're not speedsolving it, keep the first two layers simple:
Cross, three first-layer corners, keyhole three middle-layer edges in, then solve the last edge & corner either 'one piece at a time' , or as a 'non-matched F2L pair', which isn't as hard as you'd think, as there's only one corner and one edge to choose from.

And regarding the centre-piece rotation, I'm sure most people don't consider it, especially when solving unsighted. Some mirrorblocks don't have stickers, I've seen a plain pink one, for example.

I know, but all textures pointing towards the same direction just feels right.

As for the F2L, I briefly studied the keyhole (until I understood it), and I don't know, in the long run the intuitive F2L seemed to make more sense (building corner+edge blocks directly; of at the beginning it's just time consuming...)

My goal at the moment it's to try to find out the many ways I can enjoy the specificity of the mirror cube (blind, depth/thickness neutrality, making beautiful pattern, etc)