adventures in cubing

This is the third installment in the tough/hard/weird/non-intuitive F2L series, with the first and second posts among the most popular on this site and my Youtube channel. These cases (#15-18) require splitting top-layer pairs before re-combining them — what the F2L wiki refers to as “splitting pairs by going over.” As with the cases in the other tutorials, having now spent some time with alternate algorithms, these seem less “tough” than just non-intuitive.

Following the format of the previous installments, here’s a video tutorial, followed by table contrasting my old (intuitive) approaches against the improved ones:

CASE	OLD/SETUP	IMPROVED
#15	y’ (R’ U R) U2 y (R U R’) (R U’ R’) U’ (F R’ F’ R’) U’	U (R’ F R F’) U (R U R’) M U (L F’ L’) U’ M’
#16	(R U’ R’) U2 y’ (R’ U’ R) (F’ U F) U2 (R U R’)	M U’ (R’ F R) U M’ [U] M’ (U R U’ r’) (U’ R U R’) [y’] (R U’ R’) U2 (F’ U’ F)
#17	(R U2′ R’) U’ (R U R’) (R U’ R’) U (R U2 R’)	(R U2 R’) U’ (R U R’)
#18	y’ ( R’ U2 R) U (R’ U’ R) (R’ F R F’) U (R U’ R’) U (R U’ R’)	(R U R’ U’) (R U R’ U’) F R’ F’ R

The chore of keeping all these algorithms separated in my mind continues to grow more difficult….