It is true that one friend of Ed Cooke handed you a stack of credit cards and said that if you could memorize them, you was welcome to spend it? (At Ed’s birthday party, after you lost on a speed card trial to him). If it is, did you get the credit cards and how do you spent them?
You have appeared on dozens of magazines and TV shows not only in Great Britain, but all around the world. Did you feel special or happy 'cos of this?
Why do you say you won the WMC in the “dark ages”?
Can you send me a copy of your book “How to Be Clever” or the thing in the back cover was just a joke? I would love to buy it, but I live in South America…
Not really, no. I still can’t remember people’s names. What it did do, though, is improve my concentration, discipline and ability to achieve things generally. Memory training, especially the long disciplines, does have lots of beneficial side-effects - or at least I think so, anyway.
I don’t remember anything like that. I don’t even remember anyone telling me about that, or even talking about it behind my back! Are there legends about me that I don’t know? I wish someone would do that to me now; it would really help if I could use some rich person’s credit cards (all Ed’s friends are millionaire aristocrats, you know) to pay off my own credit cards…
A bit special, maybe. It is nice to be “famous”. But I mainly just feel embarrassed when I see or read about myself. When I agree to do these things, it’s mainly so I can spread the word of memory competitions and get other people competing - I do still worry that the whole thing will die out one of these days, and I’ll lose my main hobby!
Four years ago I last won, and there’s no way I’m going to win in 2013 either. That’s so long ago I can barely remember it!
I email the book as a Word document to anyone who asks for it. Send me a message with your email address! If you want a physical copy to put on your bookshelf, I’m afraid you have to buy it - I’ve only got one copy myself, and I can’t remember where I put it…
Moonwalking with Einstein, chapter 8, 4 pages from the end of the chapter…
“One of Ed’s inebriated Oxford chums, suitably impressed with Ben’s performance in spite of his loss, came up to Ben and handed him a short stack of credit cards. He told Ben that if he could memorize them he was welcome to use them.”
Excerpt From: Foer, Joshua. “Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.” Penguin Press HC, The, 2011-03-03T21:49:49+00:00. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Offering free literature from a WMC to members on a memory forum? You are so going to get mail…
Hello and thank you very much for what you are doing.
I started my memory training with an AA-ZZ letter pair image list and its respective one syllable sounds. I really like the variety that it gives for Blindsolving/abstract words/verbatim/etc, but I when I started practicing cards and Numbers and cut the number of images that I used by about an order of magnitude, It felt really weak.
1.I am on the edge of deciding if it would be better to Practice fusing my current images to make them more like an intuitive 10K system or if I should make a 1000 image list which would reasonably lead to more distinct loci. The main thing that I am worrying about with a 1000 image list is that the vowel phonetics would lead to too many arbitrary images that would not work with the code. Did you have to compromise with the phonetics for a lot of the images in your list?The idea of a 2 syllable 1000 image major system seems even worse from my perspective. The work involved is not what I am worried about. Did you have to compromise with the phonetics for a lot of the images in your list?
2.Could you also explain how you approached memorizing pi differently than memorizing numbers. Did you put more images in each loci because you only have so many places to use? or did you use very dense sentences placed in each loci?
I know that I might seem naive but I’m kind of new at this . I have 3 questions for you :
Does using memory techniques like roman room and all the other ones … help you in the long run improving your natural memory ?
Does using memory techniques impair your logic . I’ve red something somewhere about the russian “S” … a guy with best memory of all time … that he could not see logical patterns anymore . He was so caught up with his normal memorizing that he could not think properly . So when someone presented him with a series of numbers that had a pattern … he would use his techniques to memorize them instead of figuring out the logic behind those numbers .
Can memory endlessly improve with these techniques?
But it will probably not get you more than a few dollars, though…
Thanks for the reply! I have a few more questions and I hope I’m not being inconvenient.
How did you get interested in memory?
Who do you think that will win the WMC this year - or, at least, is the favorite? Johannes again or maybe someone else, like Jonas?
Did you use mnemotechniques in others areas of your life other than training to competitions or things directly related? I’m currently working in an idea of making a memory palace to store important events of my life (date, location, what happened, etc), and seems a fun thing to do…
Who is the funniest person on the memory circuit?
Do you think that Daniel Tammet (aka Daniel Corney) just uses memory techniques as a regular person or he is really a savant remembering large pieces because of childhood seizures?
@Matteo - We don’t want to get Ben in trouble, but #5 really is a great question!
@Ben - you answered my jocular “despicable persons” question; didn’t expect that, and now I am embarrassed. Disheartened to hear that years later, the long names are still slower. In the middle of the process of renaming all 1000 # images to single syllables, hoping dearly that the actual words disappear completely. There are others like you attempting to sustain and expand the popularity of these principles, I dare say if I could weave a career around this to some degree, there is nothing I would rather do. But it is strange, of perhaps fifty people I have explained the Method of Loci to, all of which were captivated at the time, none have pursued the skill themselves…
One further question: do you frequently attempt that style of review whereby numbers or words are peeked at only if they do not spring to mind within some short arbitrary time limit, or are you more of a ‘speed reader,’ taking the opportunity to either review more than once or spend more time during the encoding phase since reviewing this way is quicker?
Some of my images are sort of meaningless - I had to stretch a bit to think of something that fitted the syllable the system produced (or in a few cases, just make up a new word entirely, and invent something out of thin air that looks like that word). But now I’m familiar with them all, that doesn’t matter, because I know the images and their names just fine, it doesn’t matter if they’re meaningless to anyone else. Obviously, go with whatever works for you, but I’d still go with the 1000 image list if I was starting again.
When I was memorising pi, I created a series of 50 journeys with 111 locations on each, which crammed a whole lot more locations into a house or town than I normally use. In the kitchen of my old flat there were about 20 locations - on top of cupboards and surfaces, in the oven, sink and washing machine, and so forth.
If I was doing pi again, I would do things much better, incidentally - instead of using my 3-digit system, I’d create a 4-digit system, and think up each image as I went along. Memorising something long-term like that needs an entirely different approach to preparing for memorising as much as possible in five minutes, and I really should have thought of that at the time. Maybe I’ll have to try it again in the future…
Not that I’ve noticed. Memory techniques are very useful for specific tasks, but I’m pretty sure my natural memory is still as bad as it ever was.
“S”, according to Russian memory man Oleg Stepanov, was a guy called Shereshevsky, and the amazing memory feats he performed weren’t actually very impressive at all by modern standards. He’s just got himself a reputation as the greatest memory of all time, by virtue of getting in there first, and by virtue of most of what’s written about him never having been translated from Russian…
I don’t think anyone needs to worry about their normal thought processes being impaired by over-using memory techniques - I’ve never noticed that happening to anyone I know.
I certainly don’t think anyone’s come close to reaching the limit of what can be done with memory techniques. People keep getting better and better! We’ll just have to keep improving and see how far we can go!
By accident. Back in 2000, I was going to the Mind Sports Olympiad every year and competing in all the different mind sports there, and that year I tried the memory competition. I expected it to be like everything else I tried my hand at - that I’d have a bit of fun but never come anywhere close to the level of the top competitors. But I found memory techniques fascinating, and the rest is history!
I don’t honestly know. The German championship will give us the best indication of what kind of form everyone’s in, ask me after that! Jonas is certainly flying at the moment, but I’m not sure he’s up to the level of Johannes and Simon just yet.
I really only use memory techniques for memory competitions - that’s what my system is specifically designed for. But I say if something seems like a fun idea to you, do it! That’s actually a pretty good philosophy for life in general, too…
Ed Cooke and Lukas Amsüss were always famous as memory’s leading comedy double-act, though we don’t see much of them nowadays. We need to get some more really funny guys into these competitions, don’t we?
I’m a bit surprised by Helix’s idea that answering this question might get me into trouble, because it’s not something that’s debated among the people who go to competitions. It’s well known that he uses memory techniques like a ‘regular person’ - he was a regular at the world championships for years, slightly before my time (though we did meet in 2000), and always talking about the specific techniques he used. It’s not really that much of a secret…
I think it takes a certain kind of person to want to try memory techniques for themselves, though anyone could do it if they really wanted to…
Good question - I’ve always been more of a speed reader, going over everything as many times as possible, as quickly as possible. But in the last few years I’ve experimented with a slower review in the hour-long disciplines, closing my eyes and trying to remember everything without looking, only peeking when I can’t remember something. I think that does work, probably. I’m still not entirely sure…
As for taking more time in the encoding phase, that’s never really something I’ve done. It goes as fast as it goes, and slowing down really doesn’t seem to make any difference to how much I remember. I still think it’s better to spend as much time reviewing as you can, whatever reviewing technique you use.
Hi Ben… Despite the fact that members of this forum are flooding you, I’ll add few questions too.
1.) What do you eat in days of preparation for competition? Have you ever experienced any differences when eating sweets or fatty foods? (I did, so I wanna know if it’s just me.)
2.) Do you have any other mind-blowing hobbies? I mean sudoku, mental calculation and so on.
3.) If you had such information you possess nowadays, what would you change before you had started with memory training?
Thank you for your answers. By the way, good luck!
I’m glad you asked. At memory competitions, I normally live on McDonald’s and Burger King, and a constant stream of sweets. I’m a firm believer in eating sweets and fatty foods as much as possible! The principle behind it is simple - a big part of performing well in these competitions is being in a good, happy, confident frame of mind. If you’ve eaten something that really tasted good just before you memorise, then you’ll feel at your best. If you’ve eaten healthy ‘brain food’, you’ll be thinking “Well, that was good for me, I suppose… I’m still sort of hungry, though…”
But that’s one of those things that might not work for everyone. And does probably lead to heart attacks and obesity, so I don’t recommend it too strongly.
I do mental calculations and sudoku puzzles too. I used to be famous for competing in every mind sport I could find, until I discovered that I was actually quite good at memory and should really concentrate on that. My main other thing is othello (aka reversi), the board game - I compete in events across Britain regularly, although I’m not particularly good at it.
Well, for starters I would find out about memory techniques a lot earlier. I’d heard about the principle a few years before, but dismissed it as a load of rubbish someone had made up to sell books, and only when talking to memory competitors in 2000, when I was 23, did I finally give it a try myself.
The only thing I’d want to change is knowing what scores people can achieve nowadays - I think we’re only really limited by our imaginations, and if people in 2000 had known that 21-second packs of cards would be achieved one day, they would probably have done it quicker!
It’s probably better if everyone starts again with question 1 - otherwise we’ll be on question 25738 before long, and it’ll take us all so much longer to type…
One thing I like to do is listen to (or sing to myself - I don’t own an iPod or anything like that) a fast piece of music before the speed cards. I have the idea that it makes my brain run a bit faster. It almost certainly doesn’t, but believing something like that is 90% of making it real.
Otherwise, I don’t get in to yoga or breathing, or anything like that. That’s the kind of thing I’m prejudiced against, really - I feel like it’d be betraying my proletarian roots to do something so inexcusably middle-class. That said, I’ve never really heard of any other competitors doing breathing exercises either, although Dominic O’Brien’s brainwave-harmonising thing probably falls into that category. I don’t really understand it myself, though…
Thanks so much for doing this. It’s amazing that you’re reaching out to help the community here. I’ve read a few books on mnemonics written by Josh, Dominic, Ed and even Rhetorica Ad Herennium. Cicero says that remembering ideas or concepts is easier than learning things word for word. So far I have had no problem with placing general ideas as images at my loci. My difficulty comes when we have to learn millions of minute details which are very similar in nature. I just simply forget the images because I cannot come up with memorable images. It’s been a bit frustrating because small details get us most of our marks at our uni.
So to sum up my questions are: 1) What is your advice on creating memorable images for memorising lists of similar items- e.g. some of the nerves of the brachial plexus are medial cutaneous nerve, medial antebrachial cutaneous, medial pectoral, lateral pectoral nerves etc etc.) ( maybe it’s just my bad imagination but I end up thinking too much in forming images here and then end up forgetting them - e.g. medial cutaneous = medium size cute animal??)
2) When you are memorising huge lists of minute details, do you need a massive journey to accompany it? I don’t know whether I could cope with two images at one locus.
I have trouble doing what you describe in point one. I probably lack the imagination needed to create images or new words in the way you describe. I wonder if you could give me some examples to see how your mind works.
Some difficult syllables for me were: DuP, PiB, PEG, PIG, PEG, GuK, GAK, LuT, MEP, MuB (where the capital letter is the long form of the vowel and the small letter the short form of the vowel).
I have used dictionary sites, lists of people and Google but images for some syllables still elude me
If I was to use a 2,704 system I can imagine having to make up a vast number of new words.
Do you have any 4 digit system in mind? A consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel system (also needing many made up words) or a category system?
By the way, good luck!