XEOCross

XEOCross is an EOCross and one F2L pair, both solved at the same time. It stands for eXtended EOCross, and looks like this:

You won't be able to do an XEOCross in every solve. The best option is often to solve an EOCross and then your first pair separately. However, if there is an easy XEOCross then it can give your solve a head start.

XEOCross strategies

There are two main ways to tackle an XEOCross:

Blockbuilding

Blockbuilding is a general technique of forming rectangular sections of solved pieces, called blocks.

This is useful in XEOCross because it can be thought of not just as an EOCross and an F2L pair, but as a 2x2x2 block and two cross edges. If there are easy or pre-made blocks on the scramble, this strategy can be effective.

Here's an example: Example 1 (opens in a new tab). There is an easy 2x2x1 block (yellow-green-orange) which can be expanded into a 2x2x2 block by filling in the FL edge. Putting them together with the remaining 2 cross edges created an XEOCross.

In Example 2 (opens in a new tab), we see a pre-made 2x2x1 block that we can preserve to form a 2x2x2.

Keyhole

If you see that an F2L edge or a corner ends up solved after an EOCross, you can try to keyhole insert the remaining edge/corner. (This ties into planning more than EOCross in inspection and seeing ahead into your F2L). Here’s an example: Example 3 (opens in a new tab)

If you plan your first pair, and it turns out to be a keyhole solution, you can also incorporate that in your solve: Example 4 (opens in a new tab)