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Roux AO5 Please Critique My Solve

xyzzy

Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
2,878
It's a bit difficult to see what you're doing because of the camera angle, so this isn't going to be a super-detailed critique.

1. Try to be more flexible in how you solve the first two blocks. It looks like you're just doing DL-pair-pair for the first block and DR-pair-pair for the second block. Check out this video by Teoidus for an introduction to better blockbuilding.

2. Never rotate during the second block. (Rotations during the first block are also to be avoided, but sometimes it's useful to solve FB an x/x' rotation away or something. I don't know how the experts do it, because I'm a CFOP pleb.)

In the first solve, for the blue-orange pair, you had this case, and then you did a lot of weird M moves to get the corner and edge to pair up. There's a better direct solution (provided in the previous link). You ended up having this case, which you then solved by doing U' y' R' U R y. Don't do that; just use r U r' to insert it directly.

You can always solve the second block using only R*, Rw* and M* moves. No rotations, no F moves, no B moves.

3. Learn better 2-look CMLL algs.

U case: F R U R' U' F'
T case: R U R' U' R' F R F'
Pi case: you can continue using R U2 R2 U' R2 U' R2 U2 R, but execute it with the R2 moves alternating between clockwise and anticlockwise. Alternatively, F (R U R' U')2 F' also works and should be a bit faster.

Your J perm execution also needs work; see how Feliks does it.

4. Try not to rotate to look at back pieces during LSE. For 4a, you can deduce the orientations of all the pieces just by looking at the top face and the front sticker of DF. For 4b, you can do a U2 to check what the UB piece is. For 4c, absolutely 100% never do rotations; just use M/M2/M' to get the pieces into the desired locations.

5. You always do M moves by pushing BU to the front with your right index finger. Stop doing this. Use your left ring/pinky to push DB upwards.

6. Recognition on the last four edges is pretty shaky, and you often do unnecessary moves. There are really only four different cases you can get: two of them are 3-cycles (U2 M' U2 and U2 M U2), the "columns" case (U2 M2 U2) and the dots case (E2 M' E2 or U2 M' U2 M2 U2 M' U2). Recognise which case you have before trying to solve it. Keeping point 4 in mind, don't rotate to recognise the case (if you get a case that can't be recognised from just the top and front faces); do M moves instead. Rotations require regrips, but M moves don't.

7. There's no need to align centres immediately after finishing F2B, although this is a pretty minor thing. (Sometimes you can cancel the centre alignment with the last move of SB, or with the first/last move of CMLL.)

(edit) 8. Forgot to mention this earlier: it looks like you always do a white-bottom green block for FB. You don't have to start with the same block every time. Take note of easily-formed (or even already-formed) blocks in the scramble and build off of those, rather than always doing white-green. There are a few different levels of "freedom" common among Roux solvers; the predominant one is "x2 y" neutrality (e.g. white or yellow on bottom, any colour on the sides), with a few people being fully colour neutral (any colour on any side). Full CN is generally considered to be ideal, but it also makes CMLL recognition a bit harder.
 
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