Do you know what time it is?
Hey guys, its me CriticalCubing and today we are going to see what we can learn from Mats Valk 5.13 ER solve and this is the same scramble as the one that Mats got
Mats is a dual color neutral solver so he either solves the blue cross or the green cross, and in this he solved the blue cross so lets check it out.
For the blue cross, the cross pieces are there, there, there and there and white is actually in the correct place and the orange and yellow is also in good places in relation to each other
Once you insert the orange, the yellow piece comes here and you can insert the yellow piece with one single move and in the end
you can insert the red piece with one move, or 3 moves depending on how you do the cross. What Mats did here was that he moved this white piece aside
with a D move so as to get the orange and white piece in relation to each other and then he insert the orange down with 2 moves. Doing the D move also moves the red piece, so once you insert the orange piece
the yellow comes in here like I mentioned before but once you insert the yellow, the red piece is setup nicely and you can insert with one single move.
Like that, the cross solution was very efficient. There are other ways to solve the cross but this was the most efficient solution
What I would have done from here would be U and solve the cross like that but that probably won't be as efficient as what Mats did
The cross was very efficient. The first f2l was also very easy to track in this one and it would be these two because one you do the D move, right. The corner would be at the back
And the only time you are using R moves is at the end when doing R' for inserting the red piece and doing R' would put the corner in the top with the blue facing towards the side
and the edge was in here so once you do the D move, the edge would be placed in the bottom so once you insert the orange, the edge will come to the top so your first pair will be there and there with the white on top
Pretty easy and efficient first pair because solving these two is also very easy
So let us do the cross, D insert yellow red
Once you are done with the cross, next step is to orient it so that all the piece come together like this and this can be done in two ways, using a D move or doing a Uw move like that
Generally people use D move as that is more commonly used and entirely forget that you can also make the piece come together with an Uw move
The advantage of using Uw move instead of a D move is that Uw does the rotation for you so from this angle when you have these two as your first pair, if you do a D move then you have to rotate after that to pair these two up
Otherwise, from this angle if you do a Uw' then the cube does the rotation for you so you can solve your f2l pair like that
So in this case doing the Uw move was a really wise decision by Mats as it doesn't break the flow of the cross to f2l transition whereas using D move breaks the flow as you have to rotate and then solve the pair
So from here to make the cross come together, Mats did a Uw' move so as to do the rotation for him and he can directly go into the first pair instead of doing an extra unnecessary rotation
So from here Mats did this pair which is quite easy. You hide the corner, make the edge come here so when you get the corner back up you have your pair formed
Once you are done with first pair, there are quite a lot of options that he could have done. There was this pair which I think people might have done and there was this one this is easy
However there was this pair which is the most efficient. From here he solved this pair which was the most efficient and a wise decision by him
He took the edge out, and setup the 3 move insert and solved it like that
Only 2 pairs are left and you can't solve this pair as the corner is stuck at the back and the edge is stuck here so the only viable option left for him was this pair.
There are couple of ways you can solve this pair. The most common way is to solve it this. You put the pair here and then do R U' R' U R U' R'
but a more efficient way would be to do R' U2, inserting that and then inserting this. This alg is generally used when you have this pair as your last slot and you can do this and this and be done with that
In this case you can't use that algorithm so you have to try and do something else. There is another way to solve this and this is what I would have done
This is an RUD f2l case and you co *alg* which actually gives you a nice 3 move insert like that and you can solve it at the back
The last resort would be to do intuitive f2l which is what Mats did. He got the pair here so doing intuitive f2l was the wise decision here because that will keep the flow of the solve and won't break it
So from here, Generally in intuitive f2l you are asked to hide the corner and get the edge properly so you can setup f2l case which is exactly what Mats did
This corner gets popped to the U layer and you get this easy 3 move insert and solve it like that
Now OLL is the step which makes the solve a 5 sec solve and not a 7 sec solve. This is similar to the one that Lucas Etter got for his WR solve but this OLL is just the mirror case
If you remember my Lucas Etter video, you had to solve OLL with RU moves. In here you do the same alg but with LU moves
When you have the OLL like this these two huge blocks and these two are opposites, you are quite certain that you will get a PLL skip after you have solved OLL
So you will solve this OLL like that and because you were anticipating PLL skip, while you are doing last move you have 2 sides fully solved and this only happens when you have a PLL skip. You can do U' and your solve is done