Beginner, taking first steps [chess, pi, practice routines]

I’d advise against this. Mixing systems and exceptions can be a huge flow killer, especially when you are basing your system on sound. You’ll be focused on sounding out the numbers and trust me you’ll blank on those jersey numbers. I had 23 as Michael Jordan at first but every time 23 would come up in the middle of my practicing i’d sit there and stare at it and try to sound it out N-M, Nuh-Muh, nnnnm mmmm… It wouldnt even register that it was an exception. Switched it to gNoMe like an animated garden gnome and its one of my best images.

Same thing later on when I did my first 3-digit build. I tried to use James Bond as 007, but the whole thing was based on Major, so I got to 007 amd would try to read it as S-S-K and would blank. Realized how this was affecting learning and practice and switched 007 to SiSKo from Star Trek DS9. Never had an issue with it since.

There are rare cases of people doing ok with hybrid mixed systems, but usually consistency is key. If you don’t have to actively pay attention to when exceptions might occur, you can much more quickly get to “autopilot” reflexive fluency and that extra focus can be used to craft memorable scene interactions. You should try to make everything that is in your control be consistent.

Check out this post from a little while back for some more thoughts on starting out with Major. Even though the response was to a question about a 3-digit major list, most if not all points would apply to you when structuring your 2-digit list:

For your last point here:

Try to get people and actions mapped to the major sounds. Forget actions for now (you may find you don’t even want to bother with them. PO can be great as is!)

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