[Help Thread] OLL and PLL Discussion

[NotIesu]

I'm averaging around 45 seconds and not improving. Im currently using 2 look oll and pll with CFOP. Should I take the time to learn full pll or will it not make a big difference?

 

[xyzzy]

I'm averaging around 45 seconds and not improving. Im currently using 2 look oll and pll with CFOP. Should I take the time to learn full pll or will it not make a big difference?

Yes, you should start learning full PLL, but it's very likely that your bottleneck is at F2L. Going from 2-look PLL to full PLL will probably save you only 2 to 5 seconds on average, depending on your turning speed. It's a significant difference, but nowhere near enough to bring you to sub-30.

(I can't really give any good advice on getting faster at F2L other than the generic "turn slow and look ahead", but if you have a rough idea of which parts of F2L are slowing you down, try to work on those.)

 

[shadowslice e]

I'm averaging around 45 seconds and not improving. Im currently using 2 look oll and pll with CFOP. Should I take the time to learn full pll or will it not make a big difference?

Yes you should be learning it anyway but it might not actually improve your times all that much depending on your turning speeds. If you give us your splits we would be able to give you more personalised advice.

 

[RonM]

Slight confusion on my part for 2-look PLL.

I've been permuting corners, then edges.

I'll put "headlight" corners in the back and do an E perm to place all the corners, then from there I'll apply whatever edge perm alg I need to place the edges and finish the solve. This is faster for me than doing corners then edges because it's much, much easier to see what last layer I'm dealing with from just 2-sides (on both PC and PE) if I do it in this order, meaning I don't have to cube rotate or U, U2, or U'.

I could be mistaken but it seems like a lot of people do Edges then Corners for PLL... so am I just missing something?

 

[Rpotts]

No, the most common method for 2-look PLL is corners first then edges, usually using T or J perm to swap adjacent corners, or sometimes A perm but I don't recommend that. Btw you're probably using A perm, not E perm by the way you describe it, by putting the headlights on the back face.

 

[RonM]

No, the most common method for 2-look PLL is corners first then edges, usually using T or J perm to swap adjacent corners, or sometimes A perm but I don't recommend that. Btw you're probably using A perm, not E perm by the way you describe it, by putting the headlights on the back face.

Oh! Good, good. I can chill on that now and just focus on improving recognition and execution speed. And yeah, you were right about it being an A perm... I double checked and it turns out I've been confusing the names but not the case or alg.

You mentioned some times using T or J perm over A perm for swapping corners, mind if I ask why you recommend them over A?

 

[pglewis]

Another vote for "F2L is likely where you're losing the most time, but you should be learning more PLLs anyway". There's more to it than learning the algs, it takes time and lots of practice for recognition and recall to reach the point where it's automatic during a speedsolve.

 

[Rpotts]

Oh! Good, good. I can chill on that now and just focus on improving recognition and execution speed. And yeah, you were right about it being an A perm... I double checked and it turns out I've been confusing the names but not the case or alg.

You mentioned some times using T or J perm over A perm for swapping corners, mind if I ask why you recommend them over A?

T or J are usually easier for people to execute when they're learning than A, it took me a long time and some specific fingertrick learning and practice to be able to execute the D moves quickly in A perm, but considerably less to be able to learn the RUF algs like T/J/etc. Also the headlights end up on left for those two, instead of in back for A perm, which for many people makes it easier to see and recognize, since you can't see the Back face without rotating.

 

[CubeCubeCube]

If it wasn't mensioned till now, I've got a little trick that helped me getting better at OLL without learning all 7 algs:
Try experimenting with following things (try out different orders till you get the solution for rach of the specific orientation):
• Sune
• Anti-Sune
• U, U', U2

For example the (probably) fastest combination of those for the headlight case is (let them point to the right side) Anti-Sune U' Sune.
(I did all these things for 2x2 OLL and one can't imagine how much time and paper I spend xD)

 

[xyzzy]

For example the (probably) fastest combination of those for the headlight case is (let them point to the right side) Anti-Sune U' Sune.

Even better: Sune, back Sune. The inverse works for the T case too.

Sune OLL is not too bad as a beginner's method, but you'd want to learn at least Bruno for the pi case.

 

[PyraMaster]

Hi guys,
I just started learning full PLL(I only know 3 of them)and I was wondering if anyone knows of a fast and easy way to learn them.
I am going to a comp in about a month and a half and I want to learn them by then so I can get sub 25.

Thanks
pyramaster

 

[Happy3690]

First off, this is my first post, so if i've posted this in the wrong place or something like that, please tell me.

I've been stuck around the 40 second mark for a while now, and i'm pretty sure it's because of my dreadful last layer.

I use 2 look oll and 2 look pll(although i have all the plls except the g perms memorised,my recognition is horrific) and my average time for last layer is twenty seconds.To give some context, the first two layers take between 15 and 20 seconds for me and thats pretty much true of every solve.



What should I do to help lower my last layer time?

 

[xyzzy]

I use 2 look oll and 2 look pll(although i have all the plls except the g perms memorised,my recognition is horrific) and my average time for last layer is twenty seconds.To give some context, the first two layers take between 15 and 20 seconds for me and thats pretty much true of every solve.

How quickly can you execute your OLL and PLL algs, not counting recognition time? 15-20 seconds does sound a bit too slow for recognition to be the issue.

For 2-look OLL, my suggestions are to look ahead into the edge orientation while doing your last F2L slot (this is really easy most of the time) and to make sure you use good algs for corner orientation. Some guides teach you to use f R U R' U' f' F R U R' U' F', but R U2 R2 U' R2 U' R2 U2 R is considerably faster, for example.

For PLL, I'd suggest to always do it in one look for every case other than the G perms. (And, if/when you learn the G perms, do those in one look too.) The recognition will be significantly more difficult at first, but if you practise this a few hundred times, you will get much faster at it. And as before, make sure you use good algs. If you feel like some cases take you lot longer to execute than others, look them up on algdb.net and try out some other algs.

 

[asacuber]

How quickly can you execute your OLL and PLL algs, not counting recognition time? 15-20 seconds does sound a bit too slow for recognition to be the issue.

For 2-look OLL, my suggestions are to look ahead into the edge orientation while doing your last F2L slot (this is really easy most of the time) and to make sure you use good algs for corner orientation. Some guides teach you to use f R U R' U' f' F R U R' U' F', but R U2 R2 U' R2 U' R2 U2 R is considerably faster, for example.

For PLL, I'd suggest to always do it in one look for every case other than the G perms. (And, if/when you learn the G perms, do those in one look too.) The recognition will be significantly more difficult at first, but if you practise this a few hundred times, you will get much faster at it. And as before, make sure you use good algs. If you feel like some cases take you lot longer to execute than others, look them up on algdb.net and try out some other algs.

Alex Lau is not a pro CFOPer but he said that while learning full PLL one should start with the easy U perms and immediately after learn the difficult G perms and then continue learning the other PLLs. That makes sense tbh.

 

[Happy3690]

How long it takes me to execute each 2 look oll alg 10 times(in seconds):

Chameleon:24.81
Sune:32.00
Anti-Sune:25.94
Diagonal case:32.09
Headlights:27.32
Pi:49.12
H:41.41
L case(for orienting edges):20.47
Bar case(for orienting edges):21.46

How long it takes me to execute each two look pll alg 10 times(in seconds):

A(a) perm:36.3
E perm:1:05
Z perm:45.05
H perm:1:04
U(a) perm:48.09
U(b) perm:41.14

 

[obelisk477]

How long it takes me to execute each 2 look oll alg 10 times(in seconds):

Chameleon:24.81
Sune:32.00
Anti-Sune:25.94
Diagonal case:32.09
Headlights:27.32
Pi:49.12
H:41.41
L case(for orienting edges):20.47
Bar case(for orienting edges):21.46

How long it takes me to execute each two look pll alg 10 times(in seconds):

A(a) perm:36.3
E perm:1:05
Z perm:45.05
H perm:1:04
U(a) perm:48.09
U(b) perm:41.14

Yeah, those should be a lot faster. Start here, and work through other videos in the playlist:

 

[xyzzy]

It looks like raw turning speed is the bottleneck here, rather than recognition.

Without knowing exactly how you're turning the cube, here are some general tips:

• Use good hardware. If you're using some dollar-store cube that requires a lot of force to turn, get just about anything else. The MF3RS is allegedly a very good cube that also happens to be very cheap, though I've not tried it.
  
• You should almost never use wrist turns for U, F or D moves, since this would force you to regrip. Use your fingers for these, not your wrists. Wrist turns for L and R moves are acceptable, since there isn't really much of a choice there.
• Also, use your pinky or ring fingers for M/M' moves. This will make your H perms a lot faster if you aren't already doing this.
  
• Know your algs well enough that you don't have to look at the cube to execute them. A very common trick to make learning LL algs easier is to track F2L pairs as a mnemonic. It's a good and useful trick, but don't rely on just that. Drill the algs into your muscle memory.

 

[BarathS]

I'm trying to learn full OLL but I don't know how to memorize the algorithms.. I know full 2Look but the ones like the G perm, E perm, E perm and J perm are confusing to remember.

 

[asacuber]

I'm trying to learn full OLL but I don't know how to memorize the algorithms.. I know full 2Look but the ones like the G perm, E perm, E perm and J perm are confusing to remember.

do you mean PLL?

 

[NotIesu]

Yes you should be learning it anyway but it might not actually improve your times all that much depending on your turning speeds. If you give us your splits we would be able to give you more personalised advice.

I'm getting around 5 second cross, 15 second f2l, 10 second oll and 10 second pll (the pll will most likely improve, I started learning 1 look and I'm just learning to pair algorithms with cases)