A ridiculous mnemonic for the list of "eight-thousanders"

General Memory Chat
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Hey!

I am beginning to try to apply different mnemonic techniques to a diverse range of topics and it’s been pretty hard. Until now, I have focused on using loci for cards, but I want to try using substitute words (sensu Lorayne’s “The Memory Book”), links, stories, etc. and the combination thereof.

So, right now, I wanted to memorise the name and height (in meters) of the fourteen “eight-thousanders” (mountains topping more than 8,000 meters). This is not very hard for me because I already know all the names (though not in the right order) and a few of the heights, but I wanted to to see how long would it take to apply the techniques. The effectiveness of them is hard to judge though, so any comments or opinions from you guys would be very welcome.

I’ve always read about formulating stories (not just links, but full stories) to memorise all sorts of things and I’ve never liked the idea. I thought it was slow to create and difficult to remember which words were actually encoding information and which were not. But, now that I created my first (very ridiculous) story, I find it pretty easy to know which are the words that matter since it was I who created the story in the first place. Moreover, for quick memorisation I still find impossible to come up fast with a decent story, but for long-term memorisation of a non-urgent subject, it might work.

This little project cost me 3 hours though, which I consider a VERY LONG time for so little information. You can maybe discount some time because English is not my first language, but even so, I think the technique takes too long. I tried conjuring images instead and then placing them at loci, but the kind of encoding I used for the story didn’t work out well using loci. Maybe, if I had a complete PAO system, that approach would work better, but I still think the encoding of some names would be hard.

I don’t exactly know what kind of feedback I want here, but I would appreciate any comments whatsoever on the techniques used. I would also really appreciate if any of you could find the leisure to follow this link with the list of the 8,000ers and evaluate if my mnemonic would be any useful.

The text in the image below is color-coded to show the substitute words for the names in bold black and the words encoding the height in upper-case red. I used the Major System to encode only the last 3 digits of the height since the first digit is obviously 8.

mnemonic8000s.png
mnemonic8000s.png800×137 92.8 KB

Thanks in advance for any help.

Best!
Tammish.

P.S.1: Cato was a stoic politician of Ancient Rome whose moral integrity made him commit suicide for not accepting to live in a world led by Julius Caesar.

P.S.2: I told you the mnemonic was ridiculous…

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Hey Tammish.

I read your post, Then I squinted, cocked my head, and read it again more slowly. Then I cleaned my glasses and rebooted my computer. I brewed a pot of coffee before grabbing a pen and paper and rereading it again, taking notes carefully. After a long discussion of these notes with a friend, we were inclined to drink heavily. I was half way to the liquor store when comprehension struck me all at once, and I felt just like Alan Turing.

Kudos for creativity and for sticking with this project for three whole hours.

It looks like after spending three hours on this and then typing it back out, I assume you know it by now. But I’ll suggest a more direct solution that may hopefully help you get things done more quickly in the future.

Just make a word from the major system for each of the final three digits, as you have done. But you can do better than those above in most cases. Concrete nouns are best. “Shake” is good, as a milkshake especially but the verb could also work. “Snake, smile, slot” - these are good, though for the latter two I would go with a smiley face and a slot machine personally, since it is easier for me to picture those things. For your purposes, you did do a good job with the images. But for my purposes, they’re not so good. Unfortunately, the heights of almost all of these mountains contain letter combinations that are really difficult to work with in English! But have no fear. Here are some concrete examples that may work:

Everest: Firefly
K2: Jade talisman
Kangchenjunga: Love drug
Lhotse: Light show
Makalu: Raphael
Cho Olu: Nest
Dhaulagiri I: Dutch clogs
Manaslu: toejam
Nanga Parbat: danish (the pastry) or denchers, if you don’t know what a “danish” is.
Annapurna I: zapped
Gashabrum I: sofas
Broad Peak: slot machine
Gasherbrum II: smiley face
Shishapangma: snake

The only really hard thing to do here is to memorize the names of those mountains, and you did that part perfectly, imo.
But none of the name conversion is necessary for anything but learning the names when you do not know them. If you knew the names of the mountains already, then I assume you knew more about these mountains than that. These are hard names, and you would not know them unless you had come across them multiple times, which means you have read details about them on different occasions.

You would convert Kangchenjunga to “Kant and Jung” (I like that one the best) if Kangchenjunga was a word that meant nothing to you. You would do it because Kant and Jung do mean something to you, and thus they’ll more likely be remembered.

But if you have ever seen a picture of Kangchenjunga, or if you know what country it is in and know anything else about that country, or if you could find it on the map, or if you have a picture in your head that you think it might look like, that is sufficient. Just imagine a man and a woman on top of that mountain, sharing this bottle of ‘love drug’ and falling deeply in love with each other. Drop a firefly on Everest. And review the images a few times until you don’t need the cheat sheet anymore. No story necessary, just fourteen compound images.

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Hey LociInTheSky!

Even if your reply to me weren’t informative, just the quoted part would be worth reading it and even spending a few bucks. HAHAHA it cracked me up to read it, thanks! If that’s the kind of personality you mentioned in the other post, you are in the right path. I mean it.

So, thanks very much for the detailed post! I guess I didn’t do it all wrong then. Yes, it takes too long and it’s not practical, but I want to make it clear that it was just an experiment. I know the names, but the idea was to pretend I didn’t and that I wanted to memorise them anyway.

I don’t like the story method. In fact, I wanted to try substitute words and linking. But then I realised that with a little extra effort, I could make links that formed something like a story (even if a ridiculous alcohol-inducing one). If you have access to Lorayne’s Memory Book, please take a look at pages 43-45 and tell me (sincerely) if my story isn’t better than whatever links you’d have to form in-between those nonsensical expressions. How would you associate “Auntie flog a stein” with “pear eat a steam” with “tack a dais daze”? Man! I don’t even understand many of these words in isolation, to be sincere. If I made you want to drink coffee than liquor, I did you some good then (I am an avid drinker of both), but this Lorayne’s session of the book got me nauseated! (This is not serious criticism to Lorayne’s book, which I like very much)

I am afraid the language barrier is an issue here too. I don’t understand many of the expressions you used either. Jade talisman? Dutch clogs? Toejam? Danish? Zapped? Raphael is another name, isn’t it? Or do you mean the Ninja Turtle? If so, OK.

Anyway, I agree with your technique (of course) and I also like when you said “if you have a picture in your head that you think it might look like”. It pointed me to the idea of using Names & Faces techniques to memorise the names (and whatever other information) of the mountains. But this will be in a distant future for me because I find this discipline the most impossible of all!

Thanks again and, please, next time, go ALL THE WAY to the liquor store!

Best!
Tammish.