I’m new to this community and have been reading about the various systems including the TrocheeSystem and Ben’s System. Both of these systems use vowels to expand the major system in one way or another.
It occurred to me another way to expand the major system is to use the unassigned w/y (optionally including the h sound) to add an 11th phonetic. If we limit ourselves to no more than 3 digit numbers (including this new 11th phonetic) there are 1331 three-phonetic words, 121 two-phonetic words, and 11 one-phonetic words. Or, a total of 1463 distinct phonetics.
One could exploit this fact to create a variable loci 2 card system that does not require adding vowels. In fact there are enough to include 2 distinct or non-distinct jokers in the system! However, making the assignments of card pairs to (up to) 3 digit base-11 numbers is not trivial. However, its adherence to the major system is a nice property to preserve (when compared to other existing systems.)
It occurs to me that I can’t be the first person to discover this. I am hoping that members of this community can help me understand why this idea is inferior to the existing ideas.
So really the “inferior/superior” distinction comes down to the individual and the time they put in to practicing and using it. I would never say one system is “better” than another, because world championship level elite times have been achieved by a wide variety of systems (including true 2-card, 2-block, and single card systems like PAO.)
For myself, I tend to think about card systems in a couple ways. How simple is it to translate? How many rules are there to follow when reading the cards, structurally? How much mental conversion is needed to get from reading the cards to visualization?
If there are exceptions in the way the indices are read (like if for some pairs its the value first, some its suit first, or some its left to right and others its right to left), then I view this as a strike against the system since it takes focus away from just fluently reading and visualizing the representative imagery.
If the card system doesn’t integrate cleanly with a complete 3-digit number system, I view that as a negative as well, as it would be a chore (at least for me) to maintain two different systems for those things. Especially when cards are so naturally heavily numbers based.
I think a challenge for your 11 phonetic system would be how to account for the other 2 values. With 13 different values, unless you have a unique identifier for each, you have to make a concession about the structure which results in exceptions and the need for some cards to be read forward or backward or suit first depending on if it contains one of those “extra” values. So really, in order to minimize the structural exceptions, there should be a minimum of 13 unique phonetics (one for each value), and then 8 for the suit combinations (if you’re ok with a 2-block setup.) 11 doesn’t quite solve the problem.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, you might be interested in my 2-card system:
It is a “true” 2-card system (meanining it has a unique representational image for all 2704 possible pairs, no 2-block variable image stacking needed) and uses all of the sounds of Major plus W and H to indicate the values and suit combinations. The numerical values map to the primary major sounds, so it also contains a full 3-digit number system.
One unique difference with this system is that Major sounds that are traditionally paired and mapped to the same value (think T and D usually mapping to 1, or P and B usually mapping to 9) are now isolated and split off to represent additional elements. Since there are 16 possible suit combinations, 6 more sounds beyond the normal 0-9 mappings were needed, hence the separation of paired phonetics.
The result is a unique phonetic structure for each pair, all of which are read in the same way: suit combo → value1 → value2. Since each value or suit combination only represents ONE phonetic option, there is much less ambiguity when reading.
At risk of a second chiding, I believe the TIM system is far superior to the system I described. At first I was hesitant because of the single phonetic assignment, but the benefits are clear. The only complaint I have is that the TIM system isn’t mentioned on the wiki.
As someone considering jumping into a subset of a large system as an experiment, this is now my sole front-runner. Thank you for taking the time to develop, share, and evangelize the system.
I think it is a great way to approach a large system for someone who already knows or clicks with Major and wants a simplified and exact structure.
For me, having consistency with every element, always reading pairs in the same way, and always having the values represent the same single sound were the big differences from other systems I’ve tried and what I attempted to focus on accomplishing with the system design. I think it makes it easier up front when trying to drill and learn the associations initially rather than having to brute force through a bunch of optional phonetic variations. The downside though, is that with the restrictions to structure, it may be more difficult to fill in the list compared to the more forgiving systems with more phonetic options for each value or suit.
But, some people just don’t like Major, some prefer using vowels, and some don’t want to deal with a full 2704 list and would rather use a 1352 two-block approach, and thats all good too! In those cases Ben’s or Lance’s systems might be better fits. (Or even a simpler tried and tested single-card category-based PAO!) Its all about what clicks for the individual and honestly the quality and results you get out of a system are really more about how much practice you’re willing to put in than the specifics of the design.
As for putting it in the wiki… You’d have to petition @Josh or someone for that.
