The Solve Critique Thread

TDM said:
But table abuse is fun :( You're right though. I use the table because keeping it in the same orientation helps me know where misoriented edges are - I still can't plan EO in inspection some of the time. I'll practise lookahead, as I often don't even try for OH (idk why), but there are a few parts where that's difficult (CP and phasing).
Click to expand...

Have you considered a smaller cube to be friendlier for fingertricks and TPS?

It was mentioned earlier, but less table abuse would be good. I know I use more wide turns than most people do (because I learned OH when table abuse was not viable), but it definitely helps for EOLine. I've been practicing ZZ a lot recently, and I almost always position a last edge into the F/B face with a wide turn so that I can immediately turn the former F/B with a trigger. Practice with unlimited inspection to locate edges and plan execution in detail, not only which faces to turn but what wide rotations and what not.

LL algorithm recognition could be faster. And your Z perm is pretty slow, close to 5 seconds.

Noahaha said:
Click to expand...

At one point was it faster for you to memorize during inspection and BLD solve?

And yeah as mentioned on youtube, more F2L insertion angles, fewer y rotations, more ambidexterity for F2L, slow turn a while to improve lookahead.
 
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ravenguild08 said:
Have you considered a smaller cube to be friendlier for fingertricks and TPS?

It was mentioned earlier, but less table abuse would be good. I know I use more wide turns than most people do (because I learned OH when table abuse was not viable), but it definitely helps for EOLine. I've been practicing ZZ a lot recently, and I almost always position a last edge into the F/B face with a wide turn so that I can immediately turn the former F/B with a trigger. Practice with unlimited inspection to locate edges and plan execution in detail, not only which faces to turn but what wide rotations and what not.

LL algorithm recognition could be faster. And your Z perm is pretty slow, close to 5 seconds.
Click to expand...
That's a smaller cube than normal - it's a 54.6mm ShuangRen - should I get a 50mm cube?
I'll try wide turns a bit and see if I like it.
If you're talking about the LL recog on the 2nd and 3rd solves, that was because I couldn't remember what the AUF was for that case. I do the mirror of the same alg for BLD (it's a 2-corner twist), so I was trying to be careful to not do it incorrectly, which I often do for that case and that case only. My Z perm isn't usually that slow, but it's usually around 3-3.5 seconds.
 
Here's an untimed solve I did...
I'm new (especially to Roux), so I know it's not fast by any means. After losing my old cube in a move, I got this one ~2-3 weeks ago and switched to Roux. Pointers for practice, turning tips, etc. would all be nice! Thanks!

Scramble: L' R2 B' F L2 R2 B2 L2 U L' R F' D' U2 R B' L' F' L' D' U2 R2 F' U2 F L' U2 B' F2 L2
 
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jdbryant said:
~snip~
Here's an untimed solve I did...
I'm new (especially to Roux), so I know it's not fast by any means. After losing my old cube in a move, I got this one ~2-3 weeks ago and switched to Roux. Pointers for practice, turning tips, etc. would all be nice! Thanks!

Scramble: L' R2 B' F L2 R2 B2 L2 U L' R F' D' U2 R B' L' F' L' D' U2 R2 F' U2 F L' U2 B' F2 L2
Click to expand...

I'm no pro at Roux, but I was averaging about 25 when I stopped practicing it. I think your first block needs to be more efficient. (I'm sure a lot of other things could improve too, but that's the first thing that I thought of.)
 
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jdbryant said:
~snip~
Here's an untimed solve I did...
I'm new (especially to Roux), so I know it's not fast by any means. After losing my old cube in a move, I got this one ~2-3 weeks ago and switched to Roux. Pointers for practice, turning tips, etc. would all be nice! Thanks!

Scramble: L' R2 B' F L2 R2 B2 L2 U L' R F' D' U2 R B' L' F' L' D' U2 R2 F' U2 F L' U2 B' F2 L2
Click to expand...

definitely try to be more efficient in both blocks, you should track all the pieces of the first block while solving it, It looks like you are having trouble recognizing the solution to certain cases in the second block and in the LSE. And practice doing your midslices.
 
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SpeedSolver101 said:
Here are some timed solves i do with the CFOP method for critique.
Click to expand...

The video is a little long, so I only watched the first five solves on the stickerless.

1) Work on your cross! Solve only the cross over and over and over again. Find all four pieces during inspection, plan out every move, and execute it blindfolded.

2) Your F2L is actually quite good right now. Your lookahead will come with practice, practice, and more practice.

3) PLL recognition. Challenge yourself to recognize the cases by only looking at two sides at a time (which is pretty difficult, I admit), or by peeking at a third by doing a U turn. Use relationships between opposite face stickers and contiguous blocks and things like that.

The third solve was a +2 because you were one turn off at the end. Well, technically, it would be a DNF at a competition because your hand was still on the cube, but we're generally okay with that in unofficial solves. Fourth solve too.
 
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SpeedSolver101 said:
Here are some timed solves i do with the CFOP method for critique.
Click to expand...

As pointed out by ravenguild08, cross still needs work. During F2L, it looks like you opt for doing d/d' moves instead of rotations. That is ok, but sometimes you did them even when you didn't need to... instead learn to insert pairs from different angles and get more comfortable doing that... inserting in the back slots too. And for PLL, learn to do U moves/AUF instead of rotation. I used to do rotations too, but learned to do U moves instead... it's generally faster.
 
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I recorded some solves today.
I had to use my iphone and a somewhat bad angle because I can't use my camera. I hope you can still see enough.

A few things to mention:

-I usually don't have shaky hands, but I'm kinda sick atm so that's why I have them in the video.
-Second solve OLL took so long to recognize because it was a "knight" case or whatever they're called, and for some reason I thought it did a pair wrong when I saw it.
-I know that one solve would have been a +2 or DNF, but this wasn't about getting accurate times but rather having a general idea of what my times are overall.
-Disregard my stupid face in the reflection :D

I know that I need to practice look ahead but I thought maybe you also would have some things to say about my cross or last layer, so here it goes:

http://youtu.be/OGskOumBY20

Again, sorry for the angle and crappy Iphone video overall.
 
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@Nilsibert
The first thing I noticed is that you have a pretty good cross. I also noticed you were tracking the first pair while building your cross. This is very good. However, after your first pair you were having too long if pauses in between your f2l pairs. If you slow down your TPS just a bit you can have much better lookahead (and trust me, slowing down your TPS won't slow down your overall solve time). Your last F2L pair to OLL transition is a bit slow as well, again all you need to do is slow down your TPS a bit to fix this. The biggest thig I noticed in your solve was that your PLL needs some work. For example, in one of the solves you had a G perm, but did a U U' to see this. Usually when this happens to me in a solve I just do an AUF at the end of the solve, it is much quicker. Overall, you just need to practice slowing down your F2L and work on PLL recognition. Hope you can get to sub-20 soon. :)
 
Thanks for the advice! Yeah part of the LS to OLL transition problem is that I once knew about 30 OLLs, so sometimes I try to remember what the OLL is but end up using 2 look. And as I said, one case was a knight OLL and for some reason I thought I messed up a pair, maybe because of one corner being oriented. I probably mistook it for an uneven number of edges oriented. That never happened to me before and was really weird ;) I hope that's what you meant.

I agree that PLL recognition is a problem. Looking at the video my recognition of the R perm in the last slot was horrible(for example). I'll learn to recognize them from 3 or better yet 2 sides.

I also usually do AUF at the end of the solve, except maybe if I get an A perm and it only requires a Y to avoid AUF afterwards, cause AUF after A perms is quite awkward except for one case from a specific angle.

Currently I'm practicing slow untimed solves to train my look ahead. I got sub 20 avgs before(2 to be exact) and it was because of slowing down and looking ahead. Though these were avgs of 5 during a 100 solve session.

Thanks for the tips, I think I'll be sub 20 before the year ends :)
 
15.87 3x3 single - best NL time to date.

Scramble: D2 B2 F' L2 U' R2 D F' D U' B2 L' D2 L D F U2 F2 D2 R2 D' U2 F2 B U2

Inspection: z' x'

Cross: R' D (lol)

F2L 1: y L U L' U' y R U' R'

F2l 2 and 3: L' U L2 U' L'

F2L 4: U' y U' y L' U L U2 L' U' L

OLL: U2 F R U R' U' F' R' D' R D R' D' R U' R' D R D' R' D R

PLL: U2 R U R' U' R' F R2 U' R' U' R U R' F' U

52 moves = 3.28 TPS. Yuck.

A bit of an admission of guilt here: I was doing OH when i got this scramble, and decided to do it 2H because the cross was so easy and I could see my first pair.

Kind of lucked out with 2 and 3 as I didn't realise that I was inserting two pairs at once.

I know my OLL is horrible but I'm too lazy to learn 2 look, and with two adjacent corners to orient and a Dan Brown learner originally, R and D moves come naturally to my fingers when presented with those cases.

Any other criticism would be good. No video available, unfortunately.
 
notfeliks said:
15.87 3x3 single - best NL time to date.

Scramble: D2 B2 F' L2 U' R2 D F' D U' B2 L' D2 L D F U2 F2 D2 R2 D' U2 F2 B U2

Inspection: z' x'

Cross: R' D (lol)

F2L 1: y L U L' U' y R U' R'

F2l 2 and 3: L' U L2 U' L'

F2L 4: U' y U' y L' U L U2 L' U' L

OLL: U2 F R U R' U' F' R' D' R D R' D' R U' R' D R D' R' D R

PLL: U2 R U R' U' R' F R2 U' R' U' R U R' F' U

52 moves = 3.28 TPS. Yuck.

A bit of an admission of guilt here: I was doing OH when i got this scramble, and decided to do it 2H because the cross was so easy and I could see my first pair.

Kind of lucked out with 2 and 3 as I didn't realise that I was inserting two pairs at once.

I know my OLL is horrible but I'm too lazy to learn 2 look, and with two adjacent corners to orient and a Dan Brown learner originally, R and D moves come naturally to my fingers when presented with those cases.

Any other criticism would be good. No video available, unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Too many rotations during F2L.
@F2L 1: With the same pair you saw, you could try using the empty slots instead of doing two rotations. If you had to do rotation then try inserting pairs in the back instead of the front so you could see more (y L U L' U' y' L U' L')
@F2L 4: I would have done R' U' R U' R' U R for that insert instead of the ugly U' y U' y... but again this is because of inserting the pair in the back which I think you're not used to. You could also do U2 R' U R U2 R' U' R (what you did but without rotation).
Too bad you didn't know 1-look OLL. It would've gone to U-perm.
 
1 scramble, 5 solves

I decided to investigate my move count, so I did the following solves. I am not sure weather I counted the moves correctly (counted rotations) but they seem a bit high showing room for efficiency improvement. I solved white cross (I know the crosses are terrible) and started with green front. For the OLL's that I didn't know I used 2LOLL and put the OLL in brackets for comparison. Any trends of bad habits? Suggestions for F2L improvement? Overall suggestions? Thanks

R2 U B2 R2 D L2 U' R2 F2 U2 F2 L' B L D' F R' U' L' F' D U'

Cross: U R' B' F' U' F' R' U2 R' L2 (10)
F2L 1- Y U' R U' R2 U R (7)
F2L 2- Y U' L U L' (5)
F2L 3- U R' U R U2 R' U R (8)
F2L 4- L' U L U' L' U2 L U' L' U L (11)
OLL- U' M' U M U2 M' U M (8)
PLL- U Y' x R U' R' D R U R' u2 R' U R D R' U' R (18) = (67)

Cross: R2 D' R B' R Y' U' R' F R (10)
F2L 1- L U L' U Y' L' U' L (8)
F2L 2- U' R U R' L U' L' (7)
F2L 3- U' R U2 R' U Y R U' R' (8)
F2L 4-U2 L' U L (4)
2LOLL- U f R U R' U' f' : R U R' U R U2 R' (14) [OLL- U R U2 R2 F R F' R U2 R' (10)]
PLL- U' Y' x R U' R' D R U R' u2 R' U R D R' U' R (18) = (69) / (65)

Inspection: Y
Cross: R' U F L' U2 R2 L' B (8)
F2L 1- U R' U R Y L' U' L (8)
F2L 2- Y' L' U L U2 Y' R U R' (9)
F2L 3- U' L' U L Y' L' U' L (8)
F2L 4- Y' U2 R' U R U' R' U' R (9)
2LOLL- U f R U R' U' f' : U F R U R' U' R U R' U' R U R' U' F' (22) [OLL- U' R U R' U' R U' R' F' U' F R U R' (14)]
PLL- R2 u R' U R' U' R u' R2 y' R' U R U (14) = 77 / 69

Inspection: Y
Cross: R' U F' R' F2 L2 B (7)
F2L 1- U2 R U' R' (4)
F2L 2- U2 L U' L2 U L (6)
F2L 3- U L U L' U2 L U L' (8)
F2L 4- U' R' U2 R U2 R' U R (8)
2LOLL- f R U R' U' f' : U R U R' U R U2 R' (14) [OLL-U R U R' U R' F R F' R U2 R' (12)]
PLL- U' R2 u' R U' R U R' u R2 y R U' R' U' (15) =( 61) / (59)

Inspection: Y
Cross: R' U F' R' F2 L2 B (7)
F2L 1- U2 R U' R' (4)
F2L 2- U L' U L R' U R (7)
F2L 3- Y' U' L' U L R U R' (8)
F2L 4- Y' U R U' R' U' Y L' U' L (10)
2LOLL- U2 f R U R' U' f' : F' r U R' U' r' F R (15) [OLL-U2 R U R' U R U' R' U' R' F R F' (13)]
PLL- U2 R2 u R' U R' U' R u' R2 y' R' U R (14) = (65) / (62)
 
sk8erman41 said:
I decided to investigate my move count, so I did the following solves. I am not sure weather I counted the moves correctly (counted rotations) but they seem a bit high showing room for efficiency improvement. I solved white cross (I know the crosses are terrible) and started with green front. For the OLL's that I didn't know I used 2LOLL and put the OLL in brackets for comparison. Any trends of bad habits? Suggestions for F2L improvement? Overall suggestions? Thanks

R2 U B2 R2 D L2 U' R2 F2 U2 F2 L' B L D' F R' U' L' F' D U'

Cross: U R' B' F' U' F' R' U2 R' L2 (10)
F2L 1- Y U' R U' R2 U R (7)
F2L 2- Y U' L U L' (5)
F2L 3- U R' U R U2 R' U R (8)
F2L 4- L' U L U' L' U2 L U' L' U L (11)
OLL- U' M' U M U2 M' U M (8)
PLL- U Y' x R U' R' D R U R' u2 R' U R D R' U' R (18) = (67)

Cross: R2 D' R B' R Y' U' R' F R (10)
F2L 1- L U L' U Y' L' U' L (8)
F2L 2- U' R U R' L U' L' (7)
F2L 3- U' R U2 R' U Y R U' R' (8)
F2L 4-U2 L' U L (4)
2LOLL- U f R U R' U' f' : R U R' U R U2 R' (14) [OLL- U R U2 R2 F R F' R U2 R' (10)]
PLL- U' Y' x R U' R' D R U R' u2 R' U R D R' U' R (18) = (69) / (65)

Inspection: Y
Cross: R' U F L' U2 R2 L' B (8)
F2L 1- U R' U R Y L' U' L (8)
F2L 2- Y' L' U L U2 Y' R U R' (9)
F2L 3- U' L' U L Y' L' U' L (8)
F2L 4- Y' U2 R' U R U' R' U' R (9)
2LOLL- U f R U R' U' f' : U F R U R' U' R U R' U' R U R' U' F' (22) [OLL- U' R U R' U' R U' R' F' U' F R U R' (14)]
PLL- R2 u R' U R' U' R u' R2 y' R' U R U (14) = 77 / 69

Inspection: Y
Cross: R' U F' R' F2 L2 B (7)
F2L 1- U2 R U' R' (4)
F2L 2- U2 L U' L2 U L (6)
F2L 3- U L U L' U2 L U L' (8)
F2L 4- U' R' U2 R U2 R' U R (8)
2LOLL- f R U R' U' f' : U R U R' U R U2 R' (14) [OLL-U R U R' U R' F R F' R U2 R' (12)]
PLL- U' R2 u' R U' R U R' u R2 y R U' R' U' (15) =( 61) / (59)

Inspection: Y
Cross: R' U F' R' F2 L2 B (7)
F2L 1- U2 R U' R' (4)
F2L 2- U L' U L R' U R (7)
F2L 3- Y' U' L' U L R U R' (8)
F2L 4- Y' U R U' R' U' Y L' U' L (10)
2LOLL- U2 f R U R' U' f' : F' r U R' U' r' F R (15) [OLL-U2 R U R' U R U' R' U' R' F R F' (13)]
PLL- U2 R2 u R' U R' U' R u' R2 y' R' U R (14) = (65) / (62)
Click to expand...

Your crosses aren't so very bad but try to keep it at 8 moves max. First two solves were 10. For your example, I might have done something like
Inspection: y
XCross: B L' F2 D' R' F U' R'

Normally rotations are not counted as moves. In general, besides some improvement in cross efficiency, I think your move count is ok (also considering 2LOLL). If you have rotations for insertions during F2L, try to have the inserts in the back slots so you see more of the rest of the cube. You do it sometimes but not all the time. Any F2L pair that requires two rotations in the same direction should be a red flag (example #3, F2L 2). Though this one isn't too bad because it improves movecount at the cost of two rotations. But sometimes more fast moves is better than fewer awkward moves. Instead of y' L' U L U2 y' R U R' you could try L U2 L' U L U L' U L U' L'. It's 11 moves but fairly fast without rotations. Just a suggestion. I didn't try every example.
 
Thanks Sneakly, I'm working on cross and cross to F2L transition and usually do better than the first couple posted but I like your x-cross even better.
 
Phillip1847 said:
I currently average ~ 37 seconds, with my single best being 25.78 and my best ao5 being 34.01. I know all of the PLLs except one of the G perms and the N perms. The PLL in this solve was poor because it was a new algorithm I learned recently, and wasn't very good with it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfmk10HWdJQ
I apologize for the poor quality.
Click to expand...

At this point, just practice more and you'll be more comfortable with seeing pairs and executing them for F2L. Learn to insert pairs in the back as well as the front. d2 is very ugly... simply don't do it. Think about how you would insert it in the back instead. y2 rotation at 0:26 is ugly as well. Learn to do U2 double flick. I wouldn't worry about PLL that much right now. A lot of improvement can be made just in F2L which is the biggest part of the solve. For training the PLLs you know, it would be useful to practice your fingertricks on them such as double flicks.
 
Just a quick question - Is it OK if I post some of my (around 1:15/30ish) solves? Im trying to get better, and I well, Suck...
 
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