Hi everyone,
I'm currently learning full PLL. I know 2 look OLL, 2 look PLL and average about 37sec at the moment. I do my F2L mostly in less than 25sec, but it ranges from 15 to 30sec. I feel lately that my LL is what keeps me from getting better times, even though I still have a long way on the F2L. PLL is only 21 algos and I know about 7 of them already. So I thought if I learn two of them a day I could have it done in about a week. But at the moment my biggest problem is that I cannot even apply the new algorithms I know on a real solve because I take an incredible amount of time recognizing the case.
Indeed, I find a few cases really easy to recognize ( E Perm, Z Perm, H perm, etc ), but others are really hard ( especially G perms or anything that permutes too many pieces and/or in different directions ). The problem I find is that I don't know how to rotate my U layer to make the recognition is the easier. Say if you have the corner UFR in front of you, you can look at U F and R faces, so if you turn the U layer you might find that some pieces are already correctly placed, even though it's not going to be their final position, thus making it harder to recognize the correct case. I miss a sort of "reference" that tells me this piece should move there.
Hard to explain, but if anyone got some "tricks" to recognize the cases it would be great help. For instance for the E perm, I look for opposite corners that have the same color, with edges of the cross correctly placed.
U perms: all corners solved, one edge solved. AUF/rotate so the solved edge is either on the front or back. Look for which edge is on the right. It could go opposite to the corners surrounding it (Ua if the solved edge is at the front) or not (Ub). To tell if it's opposite - red and orange are opposite, and blue and green are opposite - similar colours are opposite each other on the cube.
H perm: you say you can recognise it easily
Z perm: same
A perms: all edges solved, one corner solved. On one A perm the 'headlights' (two corners with the same colour facing the same way) are to the left of the solved corner (Aa), and on the other they're on the right (Ab).
E perms: you can recog them easily
F perms: one side is solved completely, and there are no pairs or headlights anywhere else.
J perms: a solved side with one edge attached to it. Everything is paired. There are two J perms, one has every edge paired with the corner to its left (Ja), and the other J perm has each edge paired with the corner on its right (Jb).
N perms: no solved sides, but everything is paired (like the J perms, you can tell which N perm is which by whether the edges are paired with the corner to the left or right of them. Na is right, Nb is left). Opposite colours everywhere.
R perms: headlights, and there's an edge attached to one of them, but not the other. It's attached to the left for Rb, and to the right for Ra. The edge between them is not opposite the headlights.
T perm: headlights, and there are edges attached to both of them. The edge between them is opposite the headlights.
V perm: no headlights, and solved 2x2 block
Y perm: no headlights, looks like
this. Very easy to recog.
G perms are the harder ones. All have one set of headlights and one pair. However, two of them have the pair on an adjacent side to the headlights. This can be on the left of the headlights (Gc), or on the right (Ga). The other two are a pain. If you hold the headlights away from you, then the pair is on the left for one of them (Gd), and on the right for the other (Gb). Videos help when learning G perms. Especially because I suck at explaining things.
