Why can't I find anything..

[Rick]

Is there a trick to locating pieces on F2L? I spend more time looking for pieces than I do putting them in place... I feel like to be able to average sub-30 I would damn near have to memorize the cube prior to beginning... can anyone give me some tips?

 

[magicsquares]

I average sub-30 and I don't really look ahead that much. I probably just look for a corner or an edge that's in the U layer and then work from there. Just make sure you start your solve well by a good cross. Crosses are usually the ones that will make bad solves. They make me lose concentration because I'll look at the time and it's already around 3 seconds just for the cross so I'll rush and that's what makes me slow at times.

Sometimes I can get sub-25 solves but that's when I can do the F2L in less than 15 seconds which means that I have a good cross and I was able to really look ahead.

 

[Dene]

Just be patient and practise, getting to sub-40, I think it seems as though you are jumping down in chunks of time, but after that, it's a steady progress down. Being able to see what your next move will be is not easy at first. When I started looking ahead I went from solves of around 27 seconds, up to around 32, but then it very quickly came back down to 23 second averages. For now I would recommend you just work on your OLL and PLL, learn all the algorithms (I recommend starting with PLL). The speed will just come with time and lots of practise, you will be rewarded with perseverance, as I have been with my recent surge in sub-20 solves

 

[FU]

for f2l you should try going slow so you can look ahead. if you move like lightning you'll have delays very often because of the inability to see where other pieces are moving other than the target C/E pair. smooth f2l with no delays is what you should be aiming for, then you could slowly speed up your f2l (it will naturally speed up anyway with practice)