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Need help minimizing cube rotations/improving time

RageCuber

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The only issue is that I can do LL in 10-15 seconds and the only thing dragging my time down is f2l which takes just shy of 40 seconds :(

I'm no world record holder, with a pb of 28.81. but at your level practicing is the best you can do.
REMEMBER to practice right, fix your mistakes, if you don't you'll just be teaching yourself to do it wrong.
good luck, see you at sub 40 :D
 

mark49152

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When I was learning F2L I practised sometimes with a cube with no stickers on the LL. It helps by making the patterns more obvious as well as the way the pairs move around. Don't do it exclusively or for too long though, as you ultimately need to train yourself to see the pairs amongst all those LL stickers :)
 

Christmas

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Hey, so I thought it was best to avoid the hassle of making a new thread and I believe this will be bumped up to the top.
Anyway I'm entering my first competition and I need to improve my time to sub 30 (I think the rule is you have to have a sub 30 time to compete).
So may I please have some feedback, right now I'm averaging around 35 with a pb of 26 and in the video my last solve was 28 I believe but I still need work on consistently getting sub 30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXRaSnznUBM
If you could just give me some pointers and stuff I should work on that would help me a lot, thanks :D
 

DavidCip86

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If you could just give me some pointers and stuff I should work on that would help me a lot, thanks :D[/QUOTE]

I think you need to work on recognition. Good luck at your first competition! :)
 

ILMZS20

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you shouldnt worry about the rotations, what i did to get faster is to just solve the cube and learn pll. your f2l will get better with experience the more you solve the better your recognition will be and if a f2l alg you do intuitively seems to slow try to figure out a better one. thats atleast what i did and now im sub 20 with a pb average of 16.10 and im feeling like im getting better and better lately and see alot room to improve. so yeah, just learn by doing. atleast that what i would say :p
 

RubiksJake12

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Hey, so I thought it was best to avoid the hassle of making a new thread and I believe this will be bumped up to the top.
Anyway I'm entering my first competition and I need to improve my time to sub 30 (I think the rule is you have to have a sub 30 time to compete).
So may I please have some feedback, right now I'm averaging around 35 with a pb of 26 and in the video my last solve was 28 I believe but I still need work on consistently getting sub 30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXRaSnznUBM
If you could just give me some pointers and stuff I should work on that would help me a lot, thanks :D

I watched your video. I don't consider myself a skilled cuber as I have only an average of 22 seconds. However, I noticed a few things you can improve upon. The main thing I would say is your f2l. Your cross is maybe a little slow, but not so slow that you can't get sub 30 or 20. Your f2l is very slow I believe. You have to work on limiting your y2 rotations as they're completely unnecessary; I saw you make a few. Learn to put in pairs from the back without looking (understand where the colors are on the cube). Also, you should try to maybe learn a few different ways to deal with a few cases. Just last month my average was above 30 seconds. The way I improved was to do ONLY the F2L over and over again. Each time I put in a pair I forced myself to stop and think: Can I put this in a different way that is easier or quicker? I also got used to using all of my open slots. One thing I'm currently workng on which you might try to work on as well is lookahead. It's extremely difficult in my opinion, but absolutely necessary for improving times. Bottom line: I think you should focus on your F2L and finding faster/easier ways to insert the F2L pairs (not necessarily less cube rotations, but NO y2 turns).

Edit: just noticed that on a few of your pll/olls you take an extremely long time recognizing which oll/pll it is and then executing it. Possibly work on your recognition as well.

2nd Edit: I was thinking about this while solving today. Try to recognize, say, if your oll is facing away from you (2 cube otations away), simply do a U2 to face the Oll (or PLL) towards you, then solve it, and undo the U2 at the end. Much faster than doing a whole y2 cube turn. It's a simple, yet effective way to reduce your time in certain cases. The concept can be applied to the F2L as well.
 
Last edited:
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You shouldn't use no rotations at all. That would just lead to lots and lots of slow F and B moves during F2L. If a rotation makes moves less awkward then you should do it.
For example if your next pair can be solved by F' U F U F' U F U' F' U F, you should really be doing y L' U L U L' U L U' L' U L or even y2 R' U R U R' U R U' R' U R instead.

There is nothing wrong with reducing rotations though.
I would advise you to learn how to do your F2L pairs from different angles (not all angles, some angles suck and a rotation is better). There are also many cool F2L tricks out there as well, such as r U' R' U R U r' instead of y' U2 R' U' R U2 R' U R which allow you to deal with some awkward angles.

You shouldn't do a y2 at all in f2l no matter what speed you are at.
 
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You are right, but don't bump a thread that no one has written on for almost 7 years.

And probably those guys wouldn't see what you have written.

This is for people in the future who are reading this thread. And I can do what I want so don't tell me what to do.
 

CrispyCubing

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You shouldn't do a y2 at all in f2l no matter what speed you are at.
Crispy rant incoming. I've seen/heard a lot of people say this, and it is true as a general rule but I feel like there is a distinction to be made. Doing a y2 in the middle of your solve is far from "something to be avoided at all costs" I've seen multiple fast solves with a y2 in them. Can't recall all of them but here is one. (solve 1) Yes, a y2 is not the most efficient and in most solves it is a mistake but imagine doing a y and then finding a solved pair. The best thing to do might be to just do another y. Now, you obviously should have seen the pair before you rotated but here's my point:

TL;DR
A y2 is a mistake in most cases but will not always kill your solve. Something like a bad lockup could be just as bad. (Or worse)


you cant because bumping is against the rules of this forum. If you dont care then thats fine if you want to get banned :rolleyes:
i suggest you read the rules and think before you post. https://www.speedsolving.com/pages/rules/
I think some clarification is necessary:
f. Search Function
Please use the search function before making a new thread. If you find an older thread that is similar to the one you wanted to create, please use that thread instead of creating a new topic. However, please look at the date that the original thread was posted (it may be quite old). If you plan to add information to an existing topic, please make sure you are aware of the age of the thread, and only reply to it if you have something of value to add to it.
(Emphasis added) According to this the act of bumping a thread in itself is not against the rules.
 

Tao Yu

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Wow, I don't even remember writing that comment.

y2s should obviously be avoided as much as possible, although I think it's funny to see that some top cubers still do it occasionally. Most notable is probably Patrick Ponce's 2.99 single. I guess the solve would have maybe been faster without the y2, but it goes to show it's not a solve killer.

Edit: In my original comment I assume I meant to type y' instead of y2. Although the post still kind of makes sense because even doing an alg containing a y2 would be better than doing F' U F U F' U F U' F' U F.
 
Last edited:

Nir1213

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Crispy rant incoming. I've seen/heard a lot of people say this, and it is true as a general rule but I feel like there is a distinction to be made. Doing a y2 in the middle of your solve is far from "something to be avoided at all costs" I've seen multiple fast solves with a y2 in them. Can't recall all of them but here is one. (solve 1) Yes, a y2 is not the most efficient and in most solves it is a mistake but imagine doing a y and then finding a solved pair. The best thing to do might be to just do another y. Now, you obviously should have seen the pair before you rotated but here's my point:

TL;DR
A y2 is a mistake in most cases but will not always kill your solve. Something like a bad lockup could be just as bad. (Or worse)



I think some clarification is necessary:
f. Search Function
Please use the search function before making a new thread. If you find an older thread that is similar to the one you wanted to create, please use that thread instead of creating a new topic. However, please look at the date that the original thread was posted (it may be quite old). If you plan to add information to an existing topic, please make sure you are aware of the age of the thread, and only reply to it if you have something of value to add to it.
(Emphasis added) According to this the act of bumping a thread in itself is not against the rules.
im pretty sure it is against the rules. If it wasnt then people would just bump everything without getting banned, and thats pretty much gonna clutter the web.
 

Skewb_Cube

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im pretty sure it is against the rules. If it wasnt then people would just bump everything without getting banned, and thats pretty much gonna clutter the web.

It kind of does, but also don't... Because he/she bump a thread that is very old (almost 7 years since the last post) but he added something of value that might help some people.

In conclusion we need to follow the rules, but not be too exaggerated with them, I'm saying this because people are getting a bit too serious with them in the past few days. (I think there wasn't too many post and messages about the rules compared from now to before.)

d. No Bumping Threads
Bumping your own topic for the sake of getting it to the top is not allowed. ‘Bumping’ your thread is allowed if you have something of value to add, however, consider editing the topic instead of adding a new post to it.

f. Search Function
Please use the search function before making a new thread. If you find an older thread that is similar to the one you wanted to create, please use that thread instead of creating a new topic. However, please look at the date that the original thread was posted (it may be quite old). If you plan to add information to an existing topic, please make sure you are aware of the age of the thread, and only reply to it if you have something of value to add to it.
 
Last edited:

CrispyCubing

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im pretty sure it is against the rules. If it wasnt then people would just bump everything without getting banned, and thats pretty much gonna clutter the web.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t trying to justify this bump. I was trying to address the general rule people have made up that says “no bumping threads at all period.”
 

Nir1213

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It kind of does, but also don't... Because he/she bump a thread that is very old (almost 7 years since the last post) but he added something of value that might help some people.

In conclusion we need to follow the rules, but not be too exaggerated with them, I'm saying this because people are getting a bit too serious with them in the past few days. (I think there wasn't too many post and messages about the rules compared from now to before.)

d. No Bumping Threads
Bumping your own topic for the sake of getting it to the top is not allowed. ‘Bumping’ your thread is allowed if you have something of value to add, however, consider editing the topic instead of adding a new post to it.

f. Search Function
Please use the search function before making a new thread. If you find an older thread that is similar to the one you wanted to create, please use that thread instead of creating a new topic. However, please look at the date that the original thread was posted (it may be quite old). If you plan to add information to an existing topic, please make sure you are aware of the age of the thread, and only reply to it if you have something of value to add to it.
yes you're right, but that doesnt really help for a user from almost 7 years ago that probably doesnt even use the speedsolving forums nowdays.
 
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