Especially right after solving the cross or an x-cross. This is fairly rare, so it isn’t by any means essential, but it may come in handy when you have many empty slots and a few solved pieces. Keyhole can be adapted to solve multiple pairs at once. You can see where keyhole gets its name, like inserting a key in an empty lock. If you’re comfortable with left-hand ring finger tricks like pushing, then this is a much faster and more efficient way of solving the case. This method can also be used for a solved edge and unsolved corner instead. The edge is then inserted quickly and the D layer is moved back, solving the pair. What can be done instead with keyhole is to move the D layer away, bringing an empty slot in its place. The usual method works by removing the corner, joining it with its edge, and then inserting it into the slot. For example, you have a solved corner in its correct slot but the edge is in the top layer. It uses empty slots and the flexibility of the D layer for cases with solved corners. Keyhole is an underrated but very effective method for solving certain F2L cases. Further into the blog, I’ve listed a few case-specific tricks I have learnt and that I use in my everyday solves.

Find one that works for you and incorporate it into your solutions.

There are many resources and PDFs out there with multiple algorithms per case. Start with the intuitive approach and then look up cases for which you use many moves or you can’t find a good enough solution.

Hence, the best way would be to do a mix of both. But there may be certain cases where the intuitive approach would be inefficient. Intuitive gets you in the flow of the solve easily and helps in furthering your understanding of the pieces. You can learn F2L intuitively or by looking up algorithms. So there are effectively 41 cases that have 41 algorithms. If each corner-edge position is counted, there are a total of 42 F2L cases, which includes the solved case. F2L is also much more intuitive and flexible since you have a lot more pieces to work with rather than in layer by layer, where there are fixed steps. Doing the layer by layer method just wastes time and takes a lot more moves. Since F2L is a method that solves both layers at once, it is one of the most essential steps of speedcubing. In CFOP, the cube is solved layer by layer. Why is it important to learn F2L for Speedcubing? Having learnt the fundamentals of solving F2L cases, this blog will focus on some of the more advanced techniques and solutions that you might find useful in your own solves. F2L (First Two Layers) is the longest step in the CFOP method, and so is one of the most important to work on if someone wants to get much faster.

Multislotting