The Problem I See the Most With 15-20 Second Solvers

Having done a lot of Rubik’s Cube Coaching and critiques at this point – both online and in person – there is one particular issue that I continue to see with solvers who average from 15-20 seconds. As with most issues at this stage, it’s to do with your F2L. Even if someone has an issue with last layer, it’s such a small portion of the solve in comparison to the F2L that it’s not worth picking up on yet. Furthermore, LL is mainly improved over time by learning to recognise cases and eventually picking up on what patterns you see with the corners to predict PLL (Jayden Mcneill has some further info on this on his blog).

The main issue is this: pausing between triggers when executing F2L pairs. As someone is getting the hang of intuitive F2L they are not always sure if the trigger they have executed to ‘set up’ the pair has correctly work. Therefore, they will pause, sometimes peer at the back of the cube, to ensure that the setup moves have worked. Following this they will insert the 3-mover.

There’s such a simple way to fix this; practice drills will help, but it’s actually mainly down to mindset. Now, I’m going to say now what I’ve said to a lot of cubers at this point – sometimes it really can trigger a lightbulb moment. Here it goes:

Start thinking about solving F2L pairs as a one-phase process rather than a two-phase process.

That’s it. If you approach all of your F2L pairs as single algorithms, not a setup followed by a solve, you’ll end up negating that blank space in between and saving valuable time on your solves.

If you struggle with this at the beginning, make sure not to time your solves. Stop and think when you reach every F2L pair: “how can I solve this in one go?” Execute it as fast as you can. Don’t worry about lookahead yet, you’re not at the stage where it matters. I got to averaging sub-8 only through spamming TPS on each individual F2L pair and pausing between them. It’ll still save you time, and eventually you’ll close those gaps between your pairs.

Keep solving!

Intuitive or Algorithmic F2L?

I get this question a lot, and I feel that it's actually fairly controversial.

When I first solved the Rubik's cube, I of course used layer-by-layer. However, after only solving for about 2 weeks (maybe less), I switched to F2L.

Of course, my comprehension of the cube was not great and I dinstinctly remember struggling to understand the concept. Eventually I decided to go against the norm and learn every single F2L case as an algorithm (without necessarily knowing how it worked) to avoid the struggle of working out every case intuitively. This is known as advanced F2L, and is considered by many to be tougher. However, if you can learn algorithms quickly, this to me is undoubtedly the best way to go about F2L.

Sure, when you start out these are simply sets of moves which you are doing blindly; but, after executing the cases only a few times, the low movecount allows for quick comprehension and ability to understand connections between cases (e.g. most cases setting up to a 3 move pair).

To learn intuitive F2L is a non-essentialist approach. You are simply delaying the inevitable of learning the fastest way to execute every case.

If you want to learn advanced F2L, I would recommend to approach it like this:

For every single F2L case you come across, refer to this doc: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nzAXYUWZJ6H2wIOXaHdWXep3W57tArbR/view

Do the most efficient alg for each case you get in the solve, and then do the exact solve again to remind you of the cases you just learned.

Then, try and do a downsolve (AKA a prepared solve) using all the cases you learned - undoubtedly it will be much faster and motivate you to practice some more!

Do an ao100 this way - not only will it be fast, but you will have inicidentally learned many of the cases you practiced down.

Hope this helps!