# Deeper F2L



## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

Notice: Almost ALL of these algorithms below can be performed intuitively, and it is meant to. Do not purposely memorize them, but try to understand them. Just because an algorithm has an R2 doesn't mean you can't turn the cube around to see whats happening 

*Edge Orientation:*
Last edge orientation is affected by f2l, using moves from sub group *<R, U, D, L, F2, B2>* does not change the orientation of the last layer edges so you can use the 7 edge oriented algorithms.

You can search the wiki for algorithms solving the f2l. But don't be tricked because some of them using rotations such as y/y' which can actually cause edge orientation.

y' R = F
y R = B


*Avoiding y2 rotations:*
You might think that you have to y2, but you literally will never have to use it.
Sometimes you can use other types of rotations such as z, or even x if you know the algorithm.



blah said:


> I think I just convinced myself to alternate between bottom and left crosses during F2L. I've been messing around with this "alternating cross" strategy for the past hour or so and here are some examples of the many surprising things I discovered:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I thought about what he said and tried to make an easier way to do these "harder" case:
Example:*U F' U' F U' R U R'*
Yeah, thats an easy case. Just do *d (R' U' R) d' (R U R')*. But what if its y2 away from you as shown below.



*U F' U' F U' R U R' y2*



Instead of *y2 d (R' U' R) d' (R U R')*

When can do these alternatives:
*x L B D L' U' L U L D' L' (10f)
x' F U' F' U F' L F L' (8f*)
x' F2 U' F U F L F L' (8f*)
x' F U' R U' R' U F' U (8f*)*

Instead of relying on y2 moves, you can use an x/z rotation.
Edit: ^ those algs are bad I suck with cube explorer.. but you get the idea.



*EO Cross:*
You might start objecting, saying this is a terrible idea, but EO Cross is very simple to do and plan if you have easy EOline cases.

The probability of having a 4 or less misoriented edges is a 27.44% Chance. You could possible take advantage of such an easy case and 
perform EOCross.

_*Full EOLine takes an average of ~6.127 moves and a maximum of 9 moves*_

http://cube.crider.co.uk/zz.php?p=eoline



*More use of 'EOCross'*
Someone could use the idea from the Snyder Method, "The final CE pair is placed while simultaneously orienting and placing a minimum of one LLE. Then all LL edges are solved together with one corner. Then the last three corners are solved. "

ALL of the last layer edges would be oriented, so you would have less of 'his' cases!
But I'm not sure if Last Three Corner algorithms are finger friendly.

Thats a lot better than using my idea of Permutation ignoring OLLs for solving the cube.



*F2L, Edge permutation preservation*
You can use many insertion methods to preserve the permutation of Last Layer edges.
Hopefully you are using OCLL algorithms that preserve permutation.
This step can also be done intuitively.


Adjacent Edges(Back/Right):
U' R' F R F' U (6f*)
L' U2 R U R' U2 L U' (8f*)



Adjacent Edges(Back/Left):
R U' R' U (4f*)
L' U2 R U R' U2 L U' (8f*)


Opposite Edges(Left/Right): 
U R U2 R' U (5f*)


All Edges:
U R U' R' F' L' U' L F (9f*)
R U L' U2 L U L' U R' L (10f*)


*Lookahead vs Recognition*
This is a widely debated topic(At least in this topic xD). While looking ahead in f2l can improve your times greatly, you cannot ignore the importance of improving f2l case recognition.
Recognizing the cases(as well as piece finding) faster allows you to require less look ahead, which means higher TPS. Its important to practice both of these f2l techniques to maximize speed.


*Color Neutrality vs Fixed Cross*
Typically, color neutrality has a few advantages to fixed cross solving(only using 1 color to solve the cross). While they both average +/- 1 the same amount of moves for a cross solve, you can have some easier
crosses to plan with color neutrality.

Single Cross:
*Allows the use of easier color recognition for cross, f2l, oll, and pll.
x:limited in its probability for a better start

Color Neutral:
*More X-Crosses, Shorter Cross Moves
*Easier Crosses 
*Free F2L Pairs during inspection
*Offers better lookahead into F2L
x:Though widely trashed by white cross solvers saying it impedes recognition, IT DOES NOT. That would be like saying using green cross for 4x4 would slow down white cross for 3x3.


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## jskyler91 (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi said:


> *Edge Orientation:*
> Last edge orientation is affected by f2l, using moves from sub group *<R, U, D, L, F2, B2>* does not change the orientation of the last layer edges so you can use the 7 edge oriented algorithms.
> 
> You can search the wiki for algorithms solving the f2l. But don't be tricked because some of them using rotations such as y/y' which can actually cause edge orientation.
> ...


 
Interesting idea, but you will have poor lookahead if you do this unless you crane your head to the right or let for the z rotations. Alternatively, you can just learn how to do these difficult cases with your left hand. It may seem hard at first, but it is going to give you better look ahead later and isn't that bad after a little practice.

For this one




in the back left you could to LUL'U' 3 times. 
For this one




you could do R'URU'fR'f'
For this one




you could just learn this really fast alg: R2U2R'U'RU'R2
For the last one, you could do the same thing but with your left hand.


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## EnterPseudonym (Jul 24, 2011)

You could do EO at the beginning of the solve. Then you wouldn't have to worry about those cases.


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

I'm going to update this xD ^


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## Ranzha (Jul 24, 2011)

EnterPseudonym said:


> You could do EO at the beginning of the solve. Then you wouldn't have to worry about those cases.


 
EOCross is substantially more difficult to plan than EOLine, let alone cross. And just solving EO really doesn't help much.


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## jskyler91 (Jul 24, 2011)

I do like this idea, and I can see it being useful if we use x rotations because that doesn't limit your lookahead as bad, but z moves would take a long time to regrip and ruin lookahead.


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

You could do it on the last pair for extra speed. But I think x-rotations will always be better. And EOCross might be easier if you treat it like an X-Cross and only do easy cases.

Edit: I found out that EOline decreases the total number of F2L Cases by a lot...... So it would decrease the multislotting algorithms too.


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## EnterPseudonym (Jul 24, 2011)

Ranzha V. Emodrach said:


> EOCross is substantially more difficult to plan than EOLine, let alone cross. And just solving EO really doesn't help much.


 
You could do EOcross, but just EO is decent and 1-2 seconds for cross.


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

I'm sure people who are experienced in blind fold solving(visually) can master EOCross during inspection easily.


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## Ranzha (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi said:


> You could do it on the last pair for extra speed. And EOCross might be easier if you treat it like an X-Cross and only do easy cases.


 
But planning that during inspection is the downside. As "the guy who does stupid x-crosses", it wouldn't be worth the trouble to do EOX-Cross, let alone EOCross.
After cross, there are 20 cases for EO.


Spoiler



0 disoriented: 1
1 disoriented: 0
2 disoriented: 5
3 disoriented: 0
4 disoriented: 8
5 disoriented: 0
6 disoriented: 5
7 disoriented: 0
8 disoriented: 1


It's not too huge of a deal.




Jorghi said:


> I'm sure people who are experienced in blind fold solving(visually) can master EOCross during inspection easily.


 
Um, no.


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

Wow there are 20 cases??? But couldn't someone practice this like, PLL? Or OLL? And the algorithm lengths would be much lower.

Then people should only do it when there are 4, or at least 2 disoriented.

And for planning it just know what types of moves affect orientation.

EDIT:
But.. for normal EOline, aren't there over 2000+ cases for EO? 

"Because there are over 2000 distinct edge orientation cases, it would be impractical to memorise an algorithm for each one. "
http://cube.crider.co.uk/zz.php?p=eoline

But I see what you are saying by how hard it would be to plan.


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## Ranzha (Jul 24, 2011)

The way I counted 20 is I'd separate middle layer from U layer. So like, you'd rotate and AUF and then perform an alg.
For instance, if you had a case where UB and FR were disoriented, it'd be the same case as if UL and BL were disoriented--one edge in the E-layer, one edge in the U-layer.


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## yockee (Jul 24, 2011)

Dude, you can find algs for every single F2L case from every angle on cubestation.co.uk. Also, there are tons of videos that talk about this. You just haven't taken the time to watch them.


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## macky (Jul 24, 2011)

yockee said:


> Dude, you can find algs for every single F2L case from every angle on cubestation.co.uk.


Where? As far as I know, my advanced F2L page is the first attempt at an exhaustive collection of useful rotationless algorithms.


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## Vinny (Jul 24, 2011)

macky said:


> Where? As far as I know, my advanced F2L page is the first attempt at an exhaustive collection of useful rotationless algorithms.


 
My favorite site for F2L. 

The only problem is that the website is in Polish. I use Google Chrome, so for me my browser translates it. 

Basically this site shows you multiple variants of F2L from every single angle. It's also great because it has multiple algorithms for some of them.


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## Cubenovice (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi said:


> *Edge Orientation:*
> Last edge orientation is affected by f2l, using moves from sub group *<R, U, D, L, F2, B2>* does not change the orientation of the last layer edges so you can use the 7 edge oriented algorithms.
> 
> You can search the wiki for algorithms solving the f2l. But don't be tricked because some of them using rotations such as y/y' which can actually cause edge orientation.
> ...



Wait, are you trying to tell me that my favorite ZZ alg (Thx Conrad!) *F'* R U R' U' R' *F* R changes EO?


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## Erzz (Jul 24, 2011)

Cubenovice said:


> Wait, are you trying to tell me that my favorite ZZ alg (Thx Conrad!) *F'* R U R' U' R' *F* R changes EO?


 
It changes EO twice.
(once after F' and again after F)
After F', FR FL FU FD are misorientated.
After F' R U R' U', FU FL FD UR are misorientated.
R' F orientates all 4 again.


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## Cubenovice (Jul 24, 2011)

Erzz, thx for the explanation but I think you sligthly missed the point ;-)

Jorghi made it seem like you cannot use F or B moves and that is just not true as shown by the alg above.


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

I was going to say the exact same thing as Erzz.


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## Hershey (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi, tell me in one sentence, what is the purpose of this "method"?


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

Its not a method, its just looking into f2l. Each purpose of each topic is written.


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## uberCuber (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi, you should listen to this smart guy's advice:



Jorghi said:


> go away and practice


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## Jorghi (Jul 24, 2011)

I think for every activity there are better ways to do things. Instead of forcing bad habits and getting plateaued. xD

@uberCuber

I also noticed your "3x3 2-gen" average was twice as fast as your normal one lol.


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## uberCuber (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi said:


> @uberCuber
> 
> I also noticed your "3x3 2-gen" average was twice as fast as your normal one lol.


 
What's your point? You realize that that just means scrambling with nothing but R,U (or M,U) moves, and then solving with nothing but R,U (or M,U) moves? Obviously a partial solve like that is going to be faster than normal solves.


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## Cubenovice (Jul 24, 2011)

Jorghi said:


> I was going to say the exact same thing as Erzz.



Offcourse...

But you still fail to mention that F and B moves* can *be used


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## yockee (Jul 24, 2011)

macky said:


> Where? As far as I know, my advanced F2L page is the first attempt at an exhaustive collection of useful rotationless algorithms.


 If you go here: http://www.cubestation.co.uk/index.php?page=3x3x3/cfop/f2l/f2l

It gives you each case with each rotation. That was originally how I learned F2L back in 08 / 09.


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## Escher (Jul 25, 2011)

(I taught Conrad F' R U R' U' R' F R )

I only skimread but I really don't understand the point of this thread... There are thousands of f2l resources out there and this is just unhelpful really. At least this is the first thread you made that isn't total spam.

Just so everybody knows, EOCross is totally pointless. <R, U, L, D, F2, B2> is not some holy subgroup, and while you reduce the number of cases you can have, you also increase case variance. Normal Fridrich f2l not done by an ***** is perfectly good. 

If you've read this, please don't get confused and make sure you know that EO + f2l is a terrible idea. The thread was just made to help you understand a concept within f2l...


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## macky (Jul 25, 2011)

yockee said:


> If you go here: http://www.cubestation.co.uk/index.php?page=3x3x3/cfop/f2l/f2l
> 
> It gives you each case with each rotation. That was originally how I learned F2L back in 08 / 09.


 
Sure, though many cases listed just reduce to another one with d/d'.



Vinny said:


> My favorite site for F2L.
> 
> The only problem is that the website is in Polish. I use Google Chrome, so for me my browser translates it.
> 
> Basically this site shows you multiple variants of F2L from every single angle. It's also great because it has multiple algorithms for some of them.



Except my site has many many more algorithms for normal F2L? And is older.



Escher said:


> (I taught Conrad F' R U R' U' R' F R )



Are you responsible for spreading this one with the modern fingering?


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## Cubenovice (Jul 25, 2011)

Escher said:


> (I taught Conrad F' R U R' U' R' F R )



Don't be such a sad face ;-)
You should be glad that he teaches it to other people 

Macky,
I am sure you understand that mentioning teaching someone something is not claiming having "invented" something


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## macky (Jul 25, 2011)

Cubenovice said:


> Macky,
> I am sure you understand that mentioning teaching someone something is not claiming having "invented" something



Right. Which is why I ask, especially since I know that Escher was an early user of the index push in 2H. I consider that algorithm among the first game changers and an important step towards modern F2L, so I'm very interested in its origins.


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## Escher (Jul 25, 2011)

macky said:


> Right. Which is why I ask, especially since I know that Escher was an early user of the index push in 2H. I consider that algorithm among the first game changers and an important step towards modern F2L, so I'm very interested in its origins.


 
Jude Wright first showed me using index finger F' for J, Y and T perm in late 2008 and that was the first I'd ever seen somebody use it. At first I didn't like it but as I got faster I switched.

I came up with that F' etc alg a little while after learning the fingertrick because a) my other solutions for the case required a rotation and were sucky and b) I wanted to use the fingertrick in f2l too cos it was fun :3

It became 'popular' after I mentioned it in a thread to Chris Hardwick and he started pushing it in other threads...


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## Kirjava (Jul 25, 2011)

Escher said:


> Just so everybody knows, EOCross is totally pointless. <R, U, L, D, F2, B2> is not some holy subgroup


 
I love you. People are so keen to ignore stuff like this when desperate to try and "improve" methods.

EOCross is just move bloat.


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## cincyaviation (Jul 25, 2011)

Escher said:


> Jude Wright first showed me using index finger F' for J, Y and T perm in late 2008 and that was the first I'd ever seen somebody use it. At first I didn't like it but as I got faster I switched.
> 
> I came up with that F' etc alg a little while after learning the fingertrick because a) my other solutions for the case required a rotation and were sucky and b) I wanted to use the fingertrick in f2l too cos it was fun :3
> 
> It became 'popular' after I mentioned it in a thread to Chris Hardwick and he started pushing it in other threads...


 
I've always used index for those simply because at first I couldn't figure out exactly how do do F' with my thumb.


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## teller (Jul 25, 2011)

I don't fault the OP for exploring ideas...we all toy around with things at various stages during our career...it shouldn't be discouraged, as long as you recognize that you are not the first person to climb such peaks. OP, take the criticism constructively, even if it's rude.

But I could never stomach EOCross for the sole reason that it would eliminate fully half of my beautiful F2L! 

And modern fingering...hmm...F' is a backhand (OH flick) for me more and more these days...


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## Hershey (Jul 25, 2011)

Yeah... what is the point of this thread?


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## RyanReese09 (Jul 25, 2011)

Hershey said:


> Yeah... what is the point of this thread?


 
To discuss F2L...


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## yockee (Jul 25, 2011)

macky said:


> Right. Which is why I ask, especially since I know that Escher was an early user of the index push in 2H. I consider that algorithm among the first game changers and an important step towards modern F2L, so I'm very interested in its origins.


 
There's also the alg that Erik Akkersdijk uses: R' F' R U R U' R' F. I love that alg.


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## teller (Jul 25, 2011)

yockee said:


> There's also the alg that Erik Akkersdijk uses: R' F' R U R U' R' F. I love that alg.


 
I use that one religiously...but for BL I use the Escher's, rotated: *x' U' r U r' F' r' F r*


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## macky (Jul 25, 2011)

Escher, thanks for the info.





teller said:


> I use that one religiously...but for BL I use the Escher's, rotated: *x' U' r U r' F' r' F r*


Updated here. I don't know how to turn that though!!


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## Cubenovice (Jul 25, 2011)

Glad to see this thread turning into something usefull!

I never used my thumb for F', index finger came natural to me.

And recently I have switched to a "backhand index" for J- (always) and Y-perm (sometimes).
After an R U R' it comes quite naturally to reach down with my right index finger and flick up the F face and continue into R U ... in one fuid motion.


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## jskyler91 (Jul 25, 2011)

Cubenovice said:


> Glad to see this thread turning into something usefull!
> 
> I never used my thumb for F', index finger came natural to me.
> 
> ...


 
Your right, that is very fluid and it doesn't make your grip slip as often.


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## macky (Jul 25, 2011)

By the way, Cubenovice, just added this:


Advanced F2L top page said:


> Regarding algorithm attribution
> 
> Whenever possible and appropriate, I've attributed the algorithm, with links. This does not necessarily mean inventor, but often simply the earliest source I know or could find (hence "from" rather than "by"). Some algorithms were certainly already known but were popularized by the indicated source, perhaps with a new fingering.
> 
> Algorithms with no source are either well known, "folklore," obvious, mirrors/inverses of attributed algorithms, or my own concoction.



I take attribution pretty seriously. Much more than most other algorithm databases.


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## Forte (Jul 25, 2011)

Escher said:


> I only skimread but I really don't understand the point of this thread... There are thousands of f2l resources out there and this is just unhelpful really.


 
TOTAL AGREE


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## HaMaafnoon (Aug 6, 2011)

Good guide but the y2 part is pretty much obvious


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