# How to improve at square-1



## ArcticxWolf (Oct 11, 2010)

Just made a small site to help all those people I see on the weekly competetion getting like, 1:25.xx on sq1 when they average like, 25 on 3x3.

http://backtosquare1.webs.com/

Hope it helps.

P.S. Go through the site in order, lol.

It's not completely finished yet, but I'm working on it 

I also plan to add videos to many of the descriptions, so that hopefully helps.


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## whauk (Oct 11, 2010)

very good tutorial. i miss some pictures and EP algs but i hope those will be coming soon.
in fact i am around 35 with 5 algs + some cubeshapes. i now decided to learn some algos and get sub25


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## Daniel Que (Oct 11, 2010)

Very nice, but I'm not gonna learn Sq-1


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## ArcticxWolf (Oct 11, 2010)

whauk said:


> very good tutorial. i miss some pictures and EP algs but i hope those will be coming soon.
> in fact i am around 35 with 5 algs + some cubeshapes. i now decided to learn some algos and get sub25



Thanks! I would just make the videos and take the pictures now, but I'm celebrating thanksgiving right now haha. I'll do them probably tomorrow or the day after when I have more time. Also, I have a LOT more stuff i have to add to it, but I thought I'd just publish it now just to see what people thought, and possibly get some constructive criticism.



Daniel Que said:


> Very nice, but I'm not gonna learn Sq-1


 
Lol, 
Why'd you buy the square-1 then D:
and square-1 is fun! lol. meh


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## Neo63 (Oct 11, 2010)

Um copy and paste EP diagrams from lars site or something, and the cube shapes =P

Nice tutorial!


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## oprah62 (Oct 11, 2010)

Nice site, btw it's spelt Vandenbergh


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## vcuber13 (Oct 11, 2010)

a few thing i noticed so far

-hat adj is missing a slash at the end of the setup (which could confuse people trying to learn it
-id call it hatchet not hat (woner)
-theres a better kite square alg
-for 2opp-2adj you dont say how to position the adj and it doesnt save cp
-theres only 8 cps


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## Cyrus C. (Oct 11, 2010)

Looks good at a glance. I'll be using this.


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## blade740 (Oct 11, 2010)

You can use my imagesq script to create images if you like. Just change the url accordingly to define a state. 

http://crunchatize.me/imsq.php?shap...kers=wwwwwwwwyyyyyyyyrgbgorobgbrorgrgobobobrg


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## Gold_A (Oct 12, 2010)

I may just be being picky here, but why did you call them Y instead of N for the corner perm? ( I know it doesn't really make a different since you're not looking at the edges anyway, but it is technically an N perm, at least that's how i always saw it as) Or is that just how the square 1 community sees it, this is the first time I've ever actually looked at a guide for square 1 that wasn't just for the parity algo.


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## Neo63 (Oct 12, 2010)

lol I think I started calling it Y since I call it Y on 2x2, and he just kept the name.

And yeah vcuber is right, there are 8 possible CP cases (3x3 - skip)


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## ArcticxWolf (Oct 12, 2010)

oprah62 said:


> Nice site, btw it's spelt Vandenbergh


 
Oh, okay, I'll change that as soon as I get home.



vcuber13 said:


> a few thing i noticed so far
> 
> -hat adj is missing a slash at the end of the setup (which could confuse people trying to learn it
> -id call it hatchet not hat (woner)
> ...



- Alright, thanks.
- Vault312 calls it Hat, so that's how I learned it. 
- Yea, I heard that you can do it 2gen, but I never figured it out. Could you post it please?
- Oh whoops. I should add that in. It does save CP though. 
- Well, we're both wrong. technically there are 9, including solved state. I'll probably add that in.



Cyrus C. said:


> Looks good at a glance. I'll be using this.


 
Glad it helped.



blade740 said:


> You can use my imagesq script to create images if you like. Just change the url accordingly to define a state.
> 
> http://crunchatize.me/imsq.php?shap...kers=wwwwwwwwyyyyyyyyrgbgorobgbrorgrgobobobrg


 
Okay, thanks.




Gold_A said:


> I may just be being picky here, but why did you call them Y instead of N for the corner perm? ( I know it doesn't really make a different since you're not looking at the edges anyway, but it is technically an N perm, at least that's how i always saw it as) Or is that just how the square 1 community sees it, this is the first time I've ever actually looked at a guide for square 1 that wasn't just for the parity algo.


 
I call it Y perm because I'm referring to PBL. I guess that N is technically more correct, but by J and Y, I was just more referring to the fact that J consists of two adjacent corners being swapped while Y/N consists of two opposite corners being swapped.

Overall, I'll probably edit a lot of the formatting and stuff tomorrow so it'll probably be much better later. Thanks for all the help though.

EDIT: Does anybody have any ideas how I should organize the EPs? I've been thinking about sorting them by types on top. i.e. create a page for Opp on top, adj on top, U on top, H, Z, W, and O seperately. It would be kind of difficult though, because I kinda wanted to organize them so that they can just learn them as they get better. The problem with this is that the algorithms are sort of unrelated and just seem unorganized to anybody who is under 30 seconds...


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## blade740 (Oct 12, 2010)

I say organize them in sections based on skill level like you have the rest of the site. Nobody will want to learn full EP all at once (and if they did, they'd be on Lars' site). It seems like your goal is to provide a reasonable order in which to learn algorithms, a few at a time.


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## ArcticxWolf (Oct 12, 2010)

Alright, so I've completely redesigned the site. What I've done is that I've taken all of the algs, and condensed them into the proper pages while providing additional information. For example, in EO, I used the format:
Name:
Alg:
How to hold:
What it does:
extra notes:
when to learn:

Then, I made a seperate section altogether called: Road to sub20. This section will have the things that you have to learn while you are in this time range, and will contain breakdowns, and other things similar to what I did in each section. Instead of having them all seperate I just put them together while keeping all the other sections clean.

example:
30-40
- Learn Full EO
- Get better at Full CP
- practice EPs
Goal Breakdown:
Cubeshape - 7s
CO - 3s
EO - 5s
CP - 5s
EP + middle layer + AUF - 10s
Helpful notes:
Common problems:

Thoughts?


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## y3k9 (Oct 12, 2010)

You made a whole website devoted to square-1, cool, but hopefully you didn't spend money on it. How do you cut corners on a square-1, my pieces all fall out when i try (i have a cubetwist).


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## Lid (Oct 12, 2010)

> -theres a better kite square alg
> 
> - Yea, I heard that you can do it 2gen, but I never figured it out. Could you post it please?



Here is the alg I use for Kite/Square

/(-1,0)/(2,0)/(-2,0)/(2,0)/(-1,0)/(-3,0)/
& mirrored
/(0,1)/(0,-2)/(0,2)/(0,-2)/(0,1)/(0,3)/


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## RCTACameron (Oct 12, 2010)

I find it a bit hard to believe that you can easily be as fast at sq-1 as you are at 3x3. Like, I avg 4x as much on sq-1.

Nice, site, though. :tu If I get more serious about sq-1, I'll know where to go.


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 12, 2010)

RCTACameron said:


> I find it a bit hard to believe that you can easily be as fast at sq-1 as you are at 3x3. Like, I avg 4x as much on sq-1.


 
I really think they're about equally challenging. If you practice as much on square-1 as you practice on 3x3x3, I think you should be roughly the same speed on the two puzzles. (Give or take quite a few seconds, probably. Admittedly the fastest times on square-1 are more similar to the fastest times for 3x3x3 OH; the difficulty of square-1 is probably somewhere between 3x3x3 2H and 3x3x3 OH.) I'm about 10 seconds faster on 3x3x3 than on square-1 (23 seconds vs. 33 seconds or so), and I've probably done 10 times as many solves of 3x3x3 as square-1.

The problem is that very few people practice square-1 as much as 3x3x3.


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## vcuber13 (Oct 12, 2010)

ArcticxWolf said:


> - Vault312 calls it Hat, so that's how I learned it.
> - Yea, I heard that you can do it 2gen, but I never figured it out. Could you post it please?



Vault is woner, and if i hear right he says hatchet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAr0b3ffI1k
7:45

and lids posted it


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## blade740 (Oct 12, 2010)

I am faster at square-1 than 3x3 (14 vs 18 average) Square-1 is easier than 3x3 in my opinion. I got sub20 knowing less than 15 algorithms. Obviously practice is a factor, but someone who spent equal effort on both would probably be faster at square-1.


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## vcuber13 (Oct 12, 2010)

i agree with andrew, i average 18 on 3x3 and 23 on sq1 i know about 10 eps 8 cps and 3 eos for sq1 and full pll and like 25 olls for 3x3. also ive spent a lot more time practicing 3x3


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## ArcticxWolf (Oct 12, 2010)

Lid said:


> Here is the alg I use for Kite/Square
> 
> /(-1,0)/(2,0)/(-2,0)/(2,0)/(-1,0)/(-3,0)/
> & mirrored
> /(0,1)/(0,-2)/(0,2)/(0,-2)/(0,1)/(0,3)/



Thanks! That's actually much better than the one I use.



RCTACameron said:


> I find it a bit hard to believe that you can easily be as fast at sq-1 as you are at 3x3. Like, I avg 4x as much on sq-1.
> 
> Nice, site, though. :tu If I get more serious about sq-1, I'll know where to go.



I learned all 57 olls, 21 plls, and several F2L cases, and I'm averaging about 17. I've also been solving the 3x3 for a long time. For the square-1, I know about 20 algs in total, and I'm averaging about 20. I've only been practicing square-1 for a short amount of time. Perhaps its just me, but give it a try anyway, you never know!


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## ArcticxWolf (Oct 13, 2010)

Sorry about double post. I made some minor corrections, fixed the formatting, and added a link to vcuber's parity site, which is found here: 

square1parity.webs.com

Go on it if you want to learn more about parity. 

I also imported all of the EPs from the spreadsheet I'm using.

EDIT: I removed the EPs because the formatting screwed up when I saved it. When I figure out how to do it, I'll repost them.



y3k9 said:


> You made a whole website devoted to square-1, cool, but hopefully you didn't spend money on it. How do you cut corners on a square-1, my pieces all fall out when i try (i have a cubetwist).



Umm, well, I use an MF8. In the hardware section of the website, i mention this:



> Recently, there has been a lot of controversy over the Cubetwist square-1 and the MF8 square-1. Personally, I recommend the MF8 square-1 because
> 
> a) it will improve your accuracy
> 
> ...



As for how to make cubetwist stop popping, I'm really not sure. There simply isn't enough information on this cube right now because it's so new. The only thing I can tell you right now is just keep playing with it and see what happens. Sorry I couldn't help


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## Neo63 (Oct 13, 2010)

There's a mod by katchan from mf8 for cubetwist square-1s. PM me if you want more details, although I highly doubt I'll take time to translate the entire document though.

And why is every Torontonian square-1`solver making websites now? lol I'm working on mine right now, and it will *hopefully* be done in a few weeks (yeah I know, I'm slow at stuff).


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## TMOY (Oct 13, 2010)

RCTACameron said:


> I find it a bit hard to believe that you can easily be as fast at sq-1 as you are at 3x3. Like, I avg 4x as much on sq-1.


My times at sq-1 and 3^3 are roughly the same. And I've already gotten sub-20 avgs of 5 at sq-1, at 3^3 my best are in the high 22s.
I've practiced sq-1 more than 3^3 recently, though.


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## ArcticxWolf (Aug 23, 2011)

Sorry about necro.

Updated this site's Road to sub-20 section, though. Somewhat big update.


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## Jokerman5656 (Aug 23, 2011)

Thank you for bumping this. the site is very helpful


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## Mike Hughey (Aug 23, 2011)

I thought I'd mention: the only 4 edge perm algs I actually use in speedsolves are adj-adj, opp-opp, adj on top (my only parity algorithm), and U on top (well, okay, I know the U both directions - but only on top). I'm basically sub-40 with that, despite turning slow and being fairly bad at cubeshape. I'm pretty sure Dan Cohen set the WR average on square-1 (a long time ago, but still - 16 seconds isn't bad) with little more than that. So while it certainly helps to know lots of edge perm algs, you can get surprisingly fast without it. Which is helpful if you don't practice that much. 

Also, I see you said the following: "Rule of thumb: If it's more than 5 moves and not opposite fist or kite-square, you did something wrong." According to my list, there are quite a few 6 move cases - 17 total. Are these just non-optimal? I took these cases from the old lists, so I didn't generate them myself - maybe they aren't optimal? Or maybe you were just generalizing, and it's not actually true?

But sorry for my nitpicking - it is a really nice website.


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## vcuber13 (Aug 23, 2011)

i agree with you mike 100%, i average about 20 and only know adj-adj opp-opp adj-opp opp-adj 2 parities one parity cp and h and z perms (not even u perms). and also as far as i know your cubeshapes are optimal in twist metric


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## mmitchev (Aug 23, 2011)

I've just recently started square-1 and I've learned a beginner method that's a mix of kungfumanchoo and SinaC's tutorials, but the only thing I can't get is parity. I just want to learn the adjacent edge parity because then I would just do another Permutation afterwards like in kungfumachoos tutorial. Are there any easy parity algs or tricks or trigger to memorize or do I have to just grit my teeth and memorize it?


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## MTGjumper (Aug 23, 2011)

All of my comp averages have been done with ~15 EP algs 

@ mmitchev: have you looked at this tutorial? I learnt from that video. I still use the O perm (parity) alg he uses, and it can be sub-2.5'ed. It's an easy alg to remember (get to a point with 6 corners on U, do a (2,0) then reverse the moves and solve corner separation) and quite versatile.


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## mmitchev (Aug 23, 2011)

I never saw this tutorial, and the alg is so much easier thank you.


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## Thunderbolt (Aug 23, 2011)

You should made shape using muffin- kait
learn all EO
learn all CO
learn all EP algs for top side and :
adj-adj parity
epp adj 
epp- epp
and eventually learn those one sides algs for bottom layer


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## MTGjumper (Aug 23, 2011)

Thunderbolt said:


> You should made shape using *scallop*-kite
> *Do not* learn all EO, but instead learn the single swap, opp-opp swap and adj-adj swaps
> learn all CO *(Not many algs, and all easy to learn*
> *Do not* learn all EP algs. Instead learn adj parity, O perm (both cw and ccw), adj-adj, opp-opp, adj-opp, opp-adj, and H, Z and O-opp on top and bottom (all effectively MU algs). These are all easy algs and you can easily sub-20.


too short


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## Jokerman5656 (Aug 23, 2011)

if anyone is really stuck on a cubeshape. i recommend this page, it may be scary at first but once you use it to find a few you should be able to understand it fairly quick.

clicky


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## ArcticxWolf (Aug 23, 2011)

I'm just going to clear a couple of things up:

@Mike (and Simon partly):
Yea, I know what you mean about only using a couple of algs for square-1. I actually only use about 10 EPs in total (including mirrors).

The reason why I recommend learning so many algs when the times are so high is because of recognition issues. If you can learn all EOs at 50s, when 3s recognition isn't THAT bad, then in the future, your recognition with those algs will be much better than someone who used only the 1-1swap and 2adj-2adj swap untill 20s, then suddenly having to learn a whole bunch of new cases, when even 1s of recognition is a lot. I just don't see the disadvantage of learning algs earlier other than the fact that it'll take longer for your times to improve.

This is especially true for myself because I use the alternate EO set that allows me to inspect CP while I inspect EO. This means that I want to be as familiar with the algs as possible so I can think ahead about the rest of the solve (namely CP) while I do the algs. While this may not be completely true for everybody because they may choose to learn other EO algs, "thinking"(looking) ahead is useful in general. This means lots of practice - I actually switched over to this alternate set at ~25s, and my times immediately rose to ~30s just because of recognition issues. I'm sure it's the same with lots of people - they don't learn algs, then when they do learn them, recog is the biggest obstacle - not the actual alg, but just knowing to do the alg, and how to hold the case. This is particularly important for sq-1 because sq-1 is quite "alg-recog-alg-recog-alg" based compared to other puzzles after cubeshape. I recommended learning a lot of algs early to eliminate (or at least reduce) the recognition problems. This is an attempt to improve slowly (timewise, i mean) at first, but then later on, they don't have to experience the recognition problems from new algs that plague many cubers (including me, i still can't recog a lot of EPs that I know fast). This allows them to have a much more "linear" timecurve instead of the logarithmic curve that most square-1 solvers have (this includes me too).

As for the second half, that's a mistake on my part. I'll fix that.

@jokerman:
I use this one, personally:

http://www.alchemistmatt.com/cube/square1list.html

I do see the usefulness of that link over this one though, I'll probably add both to the cubeshape section after I finish updating that (I have a really long section that I'm writing right now actually).

I actually have a lot of stuff to change / add atm, and webs.com's sitebuilder is really laggy for me, but this is what I plan to do in the future with this site:
a) Add a more advanced section (it's going to replace the sub20 page, which is currently useless)
b) Improve cubeshape section, including a detailed explanation of cubeshape theory and how it applies. This section will also answer why I made that (bad) generalization that mike caught a little while ago)
c) Clean up the rest of the site to match the "road to sub20" section.

Unfortunately, school is starting soon and I have homework already (QQ), so this might not happen for a while.


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## Thunderbolt (Aug 24, 2011)

Lol thanks for editing


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## vcuber13 (Aug 24, 2011)

ArcticxWolf said:


> This is particularly important for sq-1 because sq-1 is quite "alg-recog-alg-recog-alg" based compared to other puzzles after cubeshape.


i dont agree with this, for the people of us who only know the basic eps, which is almost everyone, ep is kind of like cubeshape, you have to intuitively reduce the case to something like adj-adj which then leads to solved.


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## BC1997 (Aug 24, 2011)

vcuber13 said:


> i dont agree with this, for the people of us who only know the basic eps, which is almost everyone, ep is kind of like cubeshape, you have to intuitively reduce the case to something like adj-adj which then leads to solved.


 
Agreed, you utilise the algs as you please and in any order you like.


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## MTGjumper (Aug 24, 2011)

vcuber13 said:


> i dont agree with this, for the people of us who only know the basic eps, which is almost everyone, ep is kind of like cubeshape, you have to intuitively reduce the case to something like adj-adj which then leads to solved.


 
Except it's got to the point for me that despite not knowing many EPs, I know how I would do any EP case with what I do know. It's basically one-look, but between 1 and 3 algs normally.


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## vcuber13 (Aug 24, 2011)

yes, but the same applies to cubeshape
same as say f2l pairs, its intuitive and you learn it yourself, but after many times of solving it you basically dont need to think about it and is muscle memorized. for double u perms i know that i do opp-opp U D adj-adj


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## ArcticxWolf (Aug 25, 2011)

okay, let me rephrase - for me, square 1 is fairly recog-alg-recog-alg compared to other puzzles which i solve.
Since I'm telling people the way that I know sq-1, I'm assuming it's going to be fairly similar for the people which are going to follow that, in which case, learning the algs earlier would be better as it reduces the recognition time needed. 

I don't understand why you're arguing this though, it's not too relevant to the point I'm trying to make.


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## TheCubeMaster5000 (Aug 25, 2011)

Thanks for the site. This is going to be very helpful to me over the next few months.


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## Neo63 (Aug 25, 2011)

vcuber13 said:


> i dont agree with this, for the people of us who only know the basic eps, which is almost everyone, ep is kind of like cubeshape, you have to intuitively reduce the case to something like adj-adj which then leads to solved.


 
I don't think for anyone averaging 20s that cubeshape, or EPs, are intuitive. It's not intuitive just because you don't know how to solve it in one alg. After a while, even if you use three algs, you would instantly recognize, say, O perm and W perm to be (O+opp) + (U) and you would one-look it. Other than the fact that you're using a longer algorithm, there's no difference.


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## Dex (May 23, 2022)

ArcticxWolf said:


> Just made a small site to help all those people I see on the weekly competition getting like, 1:25.xx on sq1 when they average like, 25 on 3x3.
> 
> http://backtosquare1.webs.com/
> 
> ...


Hey there, getting into square one now and cubing not too long ago. This site seems like a great resource! Is there any remaining copy of it? Or a similar one?


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## Garf (May 23, 2022)

Dex said:


> Hey there, getting into square one now and cubing not too long ago. This site seems like a great resource! Is there any remaining copy of it? Or a similar one?


I wouldn't be so hipped for a guide back in 2010. There are probably way better sources that you could use.


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## PiKeeper (May 23, 2022)

Dex said:


> Hey there, getting into square one now and cubing not too long ago. This site seems like a great resource! Is there any remaining copy of it? Or a similar one?


Look at cubemaster's "how to get faster at square one (beginner to sub-30)" if you want to learn how to improve.


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## Dex (May 23, 2022)

PiKeeper said:


> Look at cubemaster's "how to get faster at square one (beginner to sub-30)" if you want to learn how to improve.


lmao I just found that lol, really comprehensive and helpful!


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