My unpopular? CFOP advice for beginners
Definition: A beginner is someone who is sub 1 minute - 25 seconds. Use CFOP with at least 2 look oll and pll.
Being fast is much much much less important than becoming good/efficient/skilled. If you're averaging 40-45 seconds, and you're envious of the sub 30, sub 20 (that's the limit) solvers, understand that most of them are terrible solvers and will never progress beyond that point until they start learning correctly which will make them become sub 45/40 again. Skip that crowd.
Color neurality: I know consensus is that it's not good anymore and white/yellow dual neutrality is just better and I agree. But I still think a complete noob should start practicing color neutrality. I'm not asking you to be comfortable with any colour, I'm asking you to be equally uncomfortable with each colour. Do it for a few weeks or months while focusing on efficient f2l on white/yellow. Finally when you're good enough to decide whether to give up or not on cn, you'll see how you are comfortable with all colors subconsciously and noticing easy crosses everywhere. It's a privilege of a beginner and I think you should take it.
X cross: You don't need to learn every f2l, oll, pll alg and graduate sub 20 before you start learning x crosses. Learn it right now. You just hit Sub 1 minute? Learn x cross. You should start full predicting cross + x cross even before you know all f2l. I don't care if it takes 5 minutes of inspection, practice it. Force yourself. It gets easier after the first day and in a few weeks you'll get comfortable. You'll still be slow, but you'll head towards a much better future. Extra: Tymon Kolasiński did it. He learned X cross before f2l. Look at him always finding efficient and elegant solutions compared to many of his peers.
F2l (most important. If you tl;dr, just read this part): First pair prediction practice should start at an uncomfortably early stage of your cubing journey. It might take 15 minutes but track those pieces. You just watched j perm/cubehead/Feliks beginner intuitive f2l video? Irrelevant. During Cross inspection push yourself to recognize and track two f2l pieces the whole way. In the beginning track one pair and restart by tracking another pair until you've tracked all four. Took you an hour? Better spent than hitting t perm continuously and calling it a hard session. Eventually start noticing if an extra move during Cross would put both f2l pieces on the top layer. You still don't know the efficient solutions to f2l so that's all you need to do. Track pieces + if possible influence cross solution to put them on the top layer.
F2l continuation: I recommend sticking to beginner intuitive f2l solutions for a long time. Many weeks. Maybe once you get better try pairing the difficult pairs yourself. Then once your neural networks have been formed sufficiently start with cubehead f2l algs but quickly go to speedcubeDB and start checking out the different algs. Learn them from all corners and angles and all kinds of slots. But learn them intuitively, see what's happening to the pieces. A few weeks to months and it'll become second nature. Overwhelm yourself in f2l, your brain can take it.
F2l final:
Part 1.NO FILLER MOVES i.e. no rotating, U moves to check pieces. Pausing for 20 seconds? Pause. Forcing yourself to recognize all the pieces without filler moves will build very good instincts. Now for ambiguous back slot edges just take a peek.
Part 2. Orientation of Edges (EO): You don't even recognise your f2l pairs without checking center caps? I don't care learn edge orientation. Check the top colour of your edges and see if they match with your front or back center colour then that edge is oriented. Note: edges in the middle layer can be O or UnO depending on how you take it out. The primary concept is that an oriented edge can be paired and solved without rotating or F moves. Now everytime you do your cross and start f2l, STOP, and look for oriented edges. Force yourself to intuitively/or if you know the alg, solve that pair without rotating/F moves. If the pair you see has unoriented edge, look for other pairs. If there are none then and only then rotate. Took you 2 minutes to do f2l? Still better than a sub 30 sec solver who solved f2l inefficiently.
- OLL & PLL: Cubehead's stuff is incredible. Force yourself to adhere to the fingertricks and take it slow. Get a good enough cube so that you can set it up in a way that you don't need to turn rough or put too much pressure on your fingers to turn. HOMEGRIP HOMEGRIP HOMEGRIP. That pinch F' with left index too slow and difficult? Don't care. Just do it. One day when you won't even notice...you'll be so much faster than you can imagine. Precise turning is more important than turning fast. Stop being fast, it's slowing you down. (Being fast is killing your speed - AthleanX new video). Start learning full PLL immediately and only when you're done start full OLL.
PLL is not just the algs: Recognition without filler moves + AUF + algs = Full pll. Disregard a single part of that equation and you don't know full pll. Also during this time of learning, anytime you solve a cube and reach pll, take the time to recognize if it's a case you know or not and only then continue. If you know a case only use that alg. If you've forgotten or hazy, look it up and then do it. Reverting to using 2 look algs ARE FORBIDDEN.
OLL same thing: practice recall. No zombie training. Stop -> recognize -> execute. And fingertricks. The only important thing is fingertricks. That's what you're learning. A person can forget and relearn Oll pll a hundred times so don't rush. Learn the perfect fingertricks. No rough turning only precision.
-:FINAL NOTES:-
Slow but steady.
Deliberate slooooow practice.
Force that brain to work.
Bad cube < Good budget cube > Kidney selling cubes (gan 16). Recommendations: Rs3m v5, GuHong pro+ and if you're rich a weilong v11 or even a gan 100. It's best to get an rs3m v5/GuHong pro+; if you dont know many cubes and don't have the opportunity to use other people's cube to find out your own preferences. Account for lubes in your budget.
Relax your hands and fingers...focus on not tensing up and HOMEGRIP HOMEGRIP HOMEGRIP.
Watch lots of cross solves, x-cross solves. Good solution > everything else.
I didn't explicitly mention look ahead because, if you use the techniques I mentioned you'd automatically achieve lookahead.
2x2 ortega look ahead (watch that jperm video about those 2-3 second solves with ortega) is a great side practice. Tracking pieces become much more immediate.
Forcing yourself to solve f2l intentionally and deliberately with the best solutions while tracking pieces and deciding based on EO is the fastest way to get better at f2l, change my mind.
As a noob don't be in a rush to "learn" the algs, learn everything with the algs. Else it's wasted effort. The whole point of the post is to let you know that unlearning bad habits is worse than slowly learning the correct way.
Have fun! When things aren't fun. Take a break. Forcing yourself through not-fun will make you involuntarily take a much longer break (applies to every hobby).
Take care of your cubes. Being nice to them will make the Cube God be nice to you.
Love y'all. Happy Cubing!!
PS. When I say learn x-cross or do first pair tracking as a beginner. I don't mean every solve. Else you'll never actually finish a solve. 😂 I mean do these things in practice. Learn these things and try to eventually incorporate these things over time. A long long time. Although I'd really prefer if you do the f2l correctly everytime. Some fast inefficient solves for fun and time measurement is fine.