All-in-one 4-digit System

General Memory Chat
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I’m currently learning my 3-digit system, so I don’t intend to apply the following system in the near future, but it’s still a fun mind exercise.

The following is the relationship between digits and consonant sounds (the phonemes are in IPA):
image

Don’t worry about the symbols if you don’t know them. This is almost the standard major system, but with H encoding the number 4 together with R because this makes words for 4 extremely easier to find.

To encode 4 digits, we need to translate vowels into numbers as well. The following is the table showing the relationships:
image

Notice that the vowels aren’t represented by phonemes. This means that the pronunciation doesn’t matter for them. This is CRUCIAL to make this system multilingual. Vowels change too much from language to language, but most idioms still have these five letters.

Examples:
Table: 10951
Door: 184 (“oo” is “o” followed by itself)
Sauce: 0501 (“au” is “a” followed by “u”)
Yoyo: 33 (y is a consonant separating the letters o, so the number is NOT 8)
Auto: 513
A A: 5 (The space in this fictional word doesn’t matter. It’s still “A” followed by a vowel)
Olive: 35281
P: 9
Wy: nothing at all

Notice that this system can generate words for any number of digits. One would probably prefer to have 4-, 3-, 2-, and 1-digit lists, 11,110 images in total.

The following are applications for this system.

2-Card System
By converting each card into a 2-digit number, it’s possible to create a 4-digit number by joining both. In order to do this, we need to associate each rank and each suit with a code digit.

Suits
:spades: : 0
:hearts: : 1
:diamonds: : 2
:clubs: : 3

Ranks
A: 1
2: 2
3: 3
4: 4
5: 5
6: 6
7: 7
8: 8
9: 9
10: 0
J: 4
Q: 5
K: 6
Joker: 7

To create a 2-digit number, we just need to apply two rules:

  1. If it is a number card, put the code of the suit before the rank’s
  2. If it is a picture card, put the code of the rank before the suit’s

In the case of jokers, the suits would be just 0 and 1 (black and red).

Examples:
5 :spades: would be represented by 05
K :hearts: would be represented by 61

If they were consecutive cards, you could memorize them by imagining sleet or sleedoorn (0561).

Binary
Let’s suppose there are 30 binary numbers divided in 10 triples, which is the case in memory competitions. Each locus should store 3 images: the first one would be a 4-digit number while the other two would be 3-digit numbers.

Each triple would be converted into a decimal digit, 10 in total. The first four triples would form the 4-digit number while the remaining 6 would form the 3-digit numbers.

Decimal
Each locus could contain three 4-digit images, so it would be possible to memorize 12 digits per locus instead of 9 (3-digit systems).

Conclusion
I believe this system is feasible, especially because it’s easy to take words from any language. However, I’m not sure if the time spent would be worth it. There would be 11,111 images (4-, 3-, 2-, 1-, and no-digit). If I spent on average 15 minutes per image (searching, choosing, building flashcards, and learning), I would spend 2,778 hours just to learn the system. I would rather spend this time practicing my 3-digit Major System. Moreover, the benefits of a 4-digit system seem negligible: a simpler 2-card system plus 12 decimal digits per locus. In conclusion, it’s interesting to think about it although I probably won’t ever use it. What is your opinion about it?

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3-Card System (64-block card system)
All-in-one 2-Block Alternative Ben System
Are you unhappy with your number system?
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Clever as usual!

About to go to sleep now. I’ll dig into this tomorrow! My initial snap reaction is aligned with what you said here:

But I love the theoretical stuff so I’m excited to read it more detail and see how it looks from a build logic standpoint!

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Everyone is different when it comes to what associations stick best for them. You’ve laid out the number-value pairs in alphabetical order. That makes sense. I’d make just a minor change, which doesn’t affect the actual rules of the system. I’d change the vowel assignments to make them align better with the shapes of the numbers:

0-O
1-I
2-U
3-E
4-A

So my main question… Is there a rule for WHEN a number should represent a vowel? It seems like its arbitrary by design so that there is flexibility in the word creation, which is fine, but I’d think would make it really challenging to learn the associations since there’s no fallback rule to guide you to the word, especially if there are 10000 of them.

I like the idea of visual vowels instead of sounds. Wondering if there is a better way to put it into practice for a 4-digit setup?

Brainstorm mode activate!

Maybe each 4-digit number generates a two word phrase… Consonant-Vowel / Consonant Vowel.

0000 is So So
0001 is So Si
0002 is So Su
Etc

The phrase would just have to START with those pairs. Trailing letters in the words could be ignored.

So So could be Sodden Sow (image being a soaking wet pig.)
So Si could be Sobbing Sigmund (Freud crying his eyes out)

Would there be enough variety for all 10000 images? Would this just turn it into a pseudo-category or adjective system where all the So’s are Sobbing or Sodden and all the Si’s are Sick or Zitty? Problem of sameness would need to be addressed if this approach were taken…

I think usefulness ultimately boils down to time needed to learn and if you feel it’s worth it, which is always the difficulty with 4-digit systems. In languages where each digit can stand for a very specific sound or character, it can be done, as it can be just like reading single words once you learn the phonetics, but to review all 10000 words when they’re based on less structured rules is probably way too much time commitment to be worth it. Imagine pouring 2500+ hours into the 300 images of a 2-digit PAO… You could probably approach world record speed in that time.

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Thank you for the ideas, Tim!

No, there isn’t a rule for when a number should represent a vowel. I did this to give more flexibility in the word creation as you said. I don’t think this would make it harder, though. In fact, there would be fewer possibilities than in a 3-digit major system.

For instance, the number 189 has 2 (t/d) x 5 (a/e/i/o/u) x 2 (f/v) x 5 x 2 (p/b) = 200 possibilities. However, there may be no or any vowel before the word, so there are 6*200 = 1200 possibilities, and I’m not even taking into consideration that there may be no vowel between consonants.

In this 4-digit system, however, there are mostly 4 cases: CVCV, VCVC, CCVC, and CVCC. There are usually 2 options for the consonants and about two for the vowels on average. Each case has 2x2x2x2 = 16 possibilities, or 16x4 = 64 in total. If you made the system any more rigid, you would face a hard time trying to find images.

Besides, the formations “CCVC” and “CVCC” are mostly made of a single syllable, like “fast” or “plate.” This would decrease the subvocalization time.

Yes, I do think it would probably become a pseudo-category system, and the problem of sameness would likely make it unmanageable.

Indeed, it’s all about whether or not it’s worth it. This makes me reflect on 3-digit systems as well since they also take significantly longer than 2-digit ones… Will 4-digit systems become as popular as 3-digit systems are today? In the future, will 3-digit systems be seen just like we see 2-digit ones? I wonder what the opinions of those who are already working on this are, like @gyanamathsir, @Honje, and @Rajadodve786.

One advantage of the system that I proposed is that it allows you to encode numbers of any size. For example, you could also build a 3-digit list. With standard Major System, you can’t really have a 4-digit system. If I ever decide to use it, I will probably memorize the 3-digit list and the first thousand 4-digit images, and then I’d apply the double-2-block system as I worked on the remaining pegs.

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Please help me understand why YoYo is 33?

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3 can be O. Y is a free sound so put together you can get yOyO.

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Tim is right. Another way of seeing this is noticing that y is a consonant, so “o” is NOT followed by another vowel; it is followed by a consonant. If the word were “ioio,” then the number would be 8, instead.

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After finding this post, I totally lost my faith in 4-digit systems. It seems not even Simon Reinhard has a pre-made list, and he said he may have “seen every of the 10.000 images once or twice,” which tells a lot about how big such list would be.

However, having a phonetic system that can support 4-digit numbers is helpful since it would allow you to have a complete 2-card system without complex rules, so I made a few modifications.

The relationships between digits and vowels are the same. However, I added the following rules:

  1. The word is only read up to the second consonant.
  2. Spaces, hyphens, dashes, silent consonants, or invalid consonant sounds are completely ignored, so the word is read as if they didn’t exist.

Now it’s much easier to fill the 2-digit numbers and the combinations are well defined:

1-Digit Names
Sequences: C, V (there can’t be anything after).

Examples: L (Death Note), Yi (Abominable), Io (Code Vein), yoyo (toy).

2-Digit Words
Sequences: CC or VC (if the former, then there may be other letters ahead because they won’t be read. The former sequence is preferable).

Examples:
Plate, Fred (The Flintstones), Scooby-doo (Scooby-Doo), glass.

3-Digit Words
Sequences: CVC or VCC (there may be anything after. The former is preferable).

Examples: door, cobweb, He-Man (Masters of the Universe), Saitama (One-Punch Man).

4-Digit Words
Sequence: VCVC

Examples: abacus, onion, Alistar (League of Legends), Ezio Auditore (Assassin’s Creed).

2-Card System
As @TheHumanTim is doing here, I think it’s a good idea to halve the suit-pairs by using a list of people and a list of objects (people = red first and objects = black first).

Doing that, you can use all digits from 0 to 7 to encode suit-pairs. 8 and 9 will represent Jacks and Queens, respectively. The King may be represented by either no-digit (if it appears first) or 3 (if it appears only in the second position).

If the picture cards appear second, then use 4-digit numbers by, let’s say, adding 9 to the thousands digit. The final number will be:
9 - picture card code - suit number code - number card

If there are two kings, then just use 1-digit numbers, which will encode just the suit pairs.

These rules are still too complex for my taste, though. Since now the 4-digit numbers would have utility for cards only, I’d prefer another strategy, which I may post later on the forum.

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Your approach to categorize words based on their phonetic components and the sequence of consonants and vowels is interesting.