I haven’t posted recently because I’ve been working on a new project: putting together 1000 images with Ben System phonetics for the digits 000-999. I just finished the first pass of the 1000 entries, with 63 gaps due to nonsense syllables, which is not too bad.
I put my PATO system on the back burner as I was getting very discouraged that my recognition times for pairs of digits using a mixed category / phonetic approach were not improving fast enough.
I originally created the mixed category / phonetic idea to reduce the number of holes in filling in images for the system. I think that was successful, because the table was not hard for me to fill in. But it was hard to remember. While some images such as 18 (as person) = “Forest Whitaker” became instant, the number of images that got that fast never exceeded a handful. Perhaps with sufficient practice they could have all have been made instant, but I’m not sure.
So 1 digit of phonetic hint + 1 digit of category hint was hard to overcome. My previous distaste over holes in pure phonetic systems like Major or Ben at the 3-digit level had to be reevaluated. 6% holes on the first pass in trying to fill out a table is not cause to reject a system.
I am encouraged by the fact that Ben, Lance, and others with large systems have admitted that they have a number of “cheats”—i.e., entries that don’t make any logical sense or don’t really fit the phonetic rules.
I chose Ben System because with Ben System you can start to read a word in what I think is the most intuitive way. For me, skipping vowels is not that natural.
Here are my first 10 holes, and I welcome any help. The phonetics are a variation of what is described in the wiki page on Ben System:
279 NE(P|B) - Nibelung (Dwarf)
289 NI(P|B) - Sniper
296 NO(G|J) - Noguchi coffee table
303 MooM - Mumu
328 Me(F|V) - Cyclotron (as in MeV = million electron volts)
329 Me(P|B) - Mäppchen (German, pencil case)
376 ME(G|J) - Amigo
378 ME(F|V) - Mifune
388 MI(F|V) - My Fair Lady
389 MI(P|B) - My Baloney
Update: I’ll enter words in the gaps as I think of them or accept suggestions.
