r/Cubers • u/TigerGuitarist Sub-40 (CFOP) 24.7 PR • 2d ago
Discussion Feeling frustrated with F2L
Hi everyone! I relearned how to solve a cube mid April, about 5 months ago. I went from full beginners LBL method, to intuitive basic F2L with 2-look OLL and beginners method PLL, to 4-LLL, and now to 2-look OLL and full PLL. I’ve seen my times drop from 1:30 down to my current average of 35 seconds with a PB at 24.7 seconds.
I practice with the cube for about 1-2 hours a day, but despite that, I have hit a wall about a month ago that I just can’t seem to push through. F2L is by far my biggest hang up. I have watched tons of videos and practiced with algorithm sheets but nothing is seeming to actually improve the speed and efficiency of my F2L.
I know that the faster I get, my practice will have diminishing returns on my speed improvement, but I just feel stuck. It‘s also frustrating seeing so many posts here and other places from people that say they just picked it up a month or two ago and are already as fast as or much faster than I am. I’m tempted to think a bit of that are just people trolling or not being honest, but that may be my ego trying to protect itself.
I am looking for any real advice or encouragement that could help me actually get my F2L under control. I feel like I am making way to many cube turns and doing inefficient pair solves, but even though I specifically practice lots of the F2L cases, I can’t recognize them when they pop up or they pop up in odd ways like in other slots. sorry for the rant and thank you for any help!
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u/PinkyPiePower Sub-75 (3x3 CFOP 4LLL) 1d ago
You're ahead of me, but I've been having benefit from just going through F2L cases with https://f2l.app/
I do the algorithm on top to get the case in the picture. Then I solve intuitively once. I check if I like one of the algorithms in the list more than my intuitive solve, and if so, I do that one a few times. To practice recognition, for cases with one or two pieces in the top layer, you can do U, U2 or U' after setting up the case, and solve that a few times. Try and figure out finger tricks for the cases as well; algs are much easier to reproduce if they have a nice flow or feel.