Speedcubing tricks for F2L: how to free a stuck corner using R U' R' sequences or a faster left-hand L' U' L method, plus rotationless insertion techniques like F' U' F U' that save time by avoiding cube rotations.
Chapters
OK, so I'm running out of topics to make big tutorials on. I think instead from now on I'll start making mini-tutorials on various topics. There are a couple of things that don't really deserve a whole tutorial just by themselves, but are still pretty cool, and this series of videos will be going through those one by one, basically. OK, this time I'll show you some f2l moves that you should definitely know about. Now, some of you will possibly find this too easy, but my audience is very broad, so there will probably be a couple of you that can learn from this. So one thing that happens a lot during solving F2L is that you have a corner stuck in the bottom layer and its edge is somewhere on the top. So like in this case, we have the orange-blue on the bottom here, the edge is on top, and you basically need to pair them up somehow. Now what I do is always put the edge on the right face together with the corner and I check these colors here on the right face, so orange for the corner and blue for the edge. Now if the colors are different, then this is the good case because all I need to do to pair up these two is R U' R', and then you can insert it very quickly. Now the more interesting case is when the two colors on the right are the same, so like in this case orange and orange. So in this case, you can't just do what we did, R U' R', because obviously the edge will be flipped. So my favorite way to handle this if I run into the case like this is to do a U' and then do the R U' R', R U' R', yeah, because that will set it up and you can just insert it quickly. So I'm reversing the case, so we have the same case. So it was a U' to put the edge to the back, and then R U' R', and then you can insert them easily. Now if I run into a case like this, then I can use my left hand to do it much quicker. I don't need a cube rotation, and the way to do it is to pair it up with the center, the edge, so here, and then do L' U' L, and then you're set up. So with your left hand, that's much quicker. Okay, so those are pretty much the best ways to liberate a corner and set it up for an insertion if the corner is stuck on the bottom layer. Now, completely unrelated to that, I'm going to show you one more cool thing. It's, um, you know how you're trying to, we're always trying to save up cube rotations, and so set up the case doing F' U' F U'. So let's say you're solving F2L and you run into this case. You make a pair somehow and now you want to insert it here, but you know you can't do it without a key rotation, right? Like, you have to rotate to insert it. So actually, you don't need to rotate to insert it. Put the pair there and do that. So what did I do? Let's do it again. F' U' F U'. So, uh, It's this, put it there, and as you go down, flick and go down. I'll do it again. I don't even know what this is, it's L2 I guess, U', R', U, R', something like that. Anyway, but I thought it was pretty cool. I don't really use it in practice too much, but I guess I should maybe. It's pretty quick. Similarly, one more awkward insertion is to set it up to a B U B'. This is a really awkward insertion. You just made a pair and you want to insert it there, but you can't do it from this angle. You have to rotate to insert it. Well, actually you don't need to rotate. So put the pair here, it needs to go there. You do R2 F and then R F' R. And I can't do this one as fast, and I'm not sure if it's possible, but I thought it was pretty cool that you can still insert it without doing the cube insertion— without doing a cube rotation, so Something like that. Yeah, I can't do it because I don't ever do it, but I think it's pretty cool. Maybe someone can master it and do much better than me. So yeah, pretty random tips, huh? Anyway, that's it for now. I'll see you later.
