Associating words and alphagrams

General Memory Chat
1

Hi,

I recently saw a guy which have associated each word of the dictionary to
its alphagram (the same set of letters in the alphabetic order).
For instance : “KEYBOARD” → “ABDEKORY”
This makes him unbeatable to the letters games.
At Sccrable when he has a given letters draw, he thus knows instantaneously
all the anagrams he can do with them.

What technique would you use to keep in mind associations
between words and their alphagrams ?

Thanks.

2

That’s a hard one…

The only idea that comes to my mind is to use a 26-digit binary number (assuming the English alphabet) containing 1s for the letters that form a given word, convert it to the necessary numbers of images according to your system, and then link them all together with an image corresponding to the word.

So, for KEYBOARD, the binary number would be:

11011000001000100100000010
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

So, if you use a two-digit number PAO system, one image will take care of 18 digits, so I believe by linking a total of 3 images (1 for the word, 1 for 18 digits, and 1 for the remaining 8 digits), and then placing each “word-chain” at a loci for long-term memorization, you could do the trick.

Are you planning on attempting such feat?

Best,
M.

3

Thanks for answering.
I just try to evaluate the dificulty.

I propose an other method: a PAO system based on letters pairs.
AB Alain Bernard (a french swimmer)
DE hit (action of person DE)
KO with a hammer (object of person KO)
a keyboard

It would thus be a PAO system with 26x26=676 items
(may 6 letters are enough to identify one word)
So with the lettres draw “AB DE KO RY” you think to
Alain Bernard using a hammer to hit something…and the word keyboard come to your mind.

4

If you consider a PAO triplet as one single item, yeah your idea would have you come up with 676 new items. My idea only needs 100, and many people already have a 2-digit PAO, so if that were your case you could just reuse what you already have. Furthermore, my idea uses the same number of images for any precision you might need, even if your word uses 26 different letters.

But this is not a “system building competition”, so by all means go for your letter-pair idea!

You might want to check this website and see if only the first 6 letters would give you the precision you need. You might be surprised…

Best,
M.

5

Did he memorize them or did he just practice enough that he can sort the letters on the spot? Someone who could visualize the letters and hold them in memory might be able to sort them in real time.

I’d probably experiment with doing it in passes:

  1. mentally scan the word for letters in 9-letter groups (reduces it to three passes of any word)
  2. add letters to the output as they are discovered

Example:

  • word: lute
  • scan #1 (a-i) -- found one letter: e
  • scan #2 (j-r) -- found one letter: l
  • scan #3 (s-z) -- found two letters: t and u
  • result = eltu

I wonder if it would help to have a letter pair system for storing the results.

I don’t know if that would work – just brainstorming. :slight_smile:

6

I just found this article about an alphagram memorizer: No Loss for Words | MIT Technology Review

“…spends up to 25 hours a week solving alphagrams before a major Scrabble tournament.”

1 Like
7

@ Josh: The guy has really associated each word of the dictionary to its alphagram.
So, when he gets a letters draw like “DEAYBKOR” in a game
he re-orders them in the alphabetic order “ABDEKORY” (in his mind or on a paper sheet),
remember the association,
and find “KEYBOARD” and any other possible anagrams.
…really very impressive

Thank you for your expertise.
I will think to your suggestions.