Eiffel Tower on fire - that’s perfect. I’m very happy to have helped!
Huggy, you made 000-999 in less than a week? How did you do that?
Always consider the first 3 consonant sounds and ignore everything after. If you stick to the rule, you’ll never get confused. But seriously, how did you do that after learning the major system just 5 days ago or so?
When I put mine together starting next week, perhaps I’ll ask you to fill in some of the tricky blanks for me 
Clocked at 00:59 with 0 mistakes.
Just saying, tomorrow will be my last day of cards and then I’ll do digits.
You win. It’s been a long and very close race, congratulations! Though I have been quick recently, I haven’t reconstructed a minute deck in 5 minutes, and now that I see how little time that is, I have no real confidence that I could have done it :)!
I have mentioned before, taking full days of breaks from cards and working on digits has had a profound effect on my card speed. Nearly as much as my digits, actually. Hope it’ll pan out the same way for you.
Thanks DH.
I cheated!! I found a very handy list on-line! I guess, I got over excited that I now have a system to run with having been delaying it for so long under the Dominic system when I just couldn’t make those last few connections!
So far, I have put together scenarios for client account numbers (work related), my bank details, mobile numbers and much more. I soon realised that I could make the scenarios alot easier with a 3 number system rather than with a 2 number system, i.e. with a 12 digit number, it only takes 4 images per scenario, rather than 6! Though I may still use the 2 number system for smaller numbers.
Obviously I do not know every single image off by heart having only had them for a few days. I assume this will take many months/years, but at least I have my list for reference and the ones that I have used, I remember.
Sure - Fire away if you get any blanks. Will be happy to help… 
EDIT - Congrats Wessells! You hit the holy grail!! My target of reaching sub 1 minute before the end of March seems unlikely as I think I have hit a temporary Plateau, but I know it won’t last and I am still getting enjoyment out of doing it so have faith this will pass shortly! Maybe by end of April!
Huggy,
I have two questions for you.
Also, thanks, it cost me a few months but I guess there are not even 100 people who can do this on the entire earth.
People,
I have one question for you,
Hey Wessells,
1 - I don’t use a metronome. I do most of my practising during my daily commute to and from work via an iphone app, so it isn’t exactly practical to use one on a train. How does using one better assist you, as opposed to just flicking through the cards at your own pace? I’m intrigued.
2 - Ha ha, yes it is me. I meant to put in the whole picture, but the site doesn’t allow for scaling so my head got chopped off. It’s not because I’m butt ugly, honest! Spend my lunchtimes in the gym - gets me away from my desk and breaks up my working day!
I’m sure I will get there soon enough. My times have been falling quite rapidly lately and I have heard from reliable sources that breaking the 1 minute barrier is a whole different ball of wax to breaking the 2 minute barrier.
Regading your numbers. As you may have read above, I started with the Dominic system, however couldn’t finish the 00-99 associations (and this was WITH the addition of my 52 PAO for cards), so I switched to the Major system, which is proving much better!
The Dominic system seems more simple from the outset, i.e. 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc, but it can fall down when making associations as it did with me. Whilst the Major takes a a bit more time to learn, it helps you run alot further. Just my personal experience of course.
A metronome assists you by minimizing the maximum amound of time you can spend memorizing any single card, which can really slow you down. It has helped me very much, and now makes me keep an eye out for those cards that can potentially slow me down, or just change them. These days, I don’t have any problem cards, and can put the images in the loci quickly, about 45 -50 seconds on average. It’s only half the battle but I owe it to the metronome I think.
Go with major system man it’s really awesome. If you get stuck on a picture you can just make one up on the spot. Of course you won’t have to do this in the future but it’s a cool advantage that lets you keep going. And unlike PAO, with just objects at first you can play with putting one or two or three per loci - whatever you like. I’m a big fan of it obviously. With minimal practice, reading the consonant sounds often brings the image to mind.
Also Yan suggests setting the clock for 30 seconds on icue and racing through the images fast enough just to read them, forcing a rudimentary image in your mind, as fast as possible, write down your times real quick and just do it like 25 times or so, that’s what I do, over 15 minutes, and watch your record amount expand quickly. It’s a great exercise
Edit: by the way, my record is 78 - reading adjective+object, which I prefer, and 3 days ago when I started, it was just over 60! When one number really slowed me down, I wrote the number and its definition 3 times after the run. It sucks to do, is that why those are less trouble for me now?
Hi All,
I made a bit of a breakthrough yesterday with my card time. Not quiet as impressive as some people here but I broke the 5 minute barrier with 4.55. The attempt before that was 7.40.
I made a few mistakes on recall but I decided not to worry so much about accuracy and to focus on time. I also decided on my second attempt yesterday that I would spend less time trying to fix the image and just trust my Loci!
I got that bit of inspiration from my success with my 1-100 major peg system and using the major system for binary.
I am now going to practise each day for a while focusing on getting my image fixation as instant as possible.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
regards,
Sea
Nice one Sea. Well done.
Got a new record myself this morning. Not for a full deck though. Was practising with a third:-
17 cards, perfect recall - 17 seconds.
Way to go Sea!
It’s hard to know exactly when an image is clear or vivid enough to remember it. But I think everyone in this thread has said that at one point or another, that they began trusting themselves more. +1 on not worrying about the mistakes. Once you can do 4 minutes with a few mistakes, a perfect 4:55 should be fairly easy.
Great for you too Huggy. It’s fun to split the decks up in different ways and compare. We’re the 17 cards random, or ones you felt may require some special practice?
Been here in the Big Apple since yesterday. What a place!
Setting up my Union Station 17 loci path
Hey guys,
long time no post! Not from me anyway. Just wanted to wish DH all the best at the Championships. Good luck man! Go kick ass and keep it cool!
And congrats to Wessells for breaking the 1 min barrier. Well done!
I’ve been drifting away from the memory bizz for a couple of weeks (though I kept following this thread) again but resumed practicing last weekend. First few rounds were really tough and I really had to struggle to build some of the images, but I’d say I’m back on my old level by now. Gonna be practicing on a regular basis again.
Thanks I appreciate it, Feels great to be supported!
It’s 3:00 am in New York right now, I slept from 10:00 to 1:00 a.m, then just looked at the clock to find O had just been sitting there for two hours doing nothing. So I just turned on the light, screw it, three hours is going to have to be enough because Im not getting any more sleep than that. I’ll just spend the next 5 hours warming up, breaking my 3-day stint! (Not kidding, I didn’t memorize a thing for 3 days, except for regularly daily use like when I lock away key parts of conversations from time to time.)
So for the next 5 hours, it’ll be one hour of poetry, 15 minute break,
1 hour of digits, 15 minute break, one hour of faces, break, then one hour of cards… The. It’ll be a little after 8:00… Showtike is 8:00 and I’m feeling pretty confident. I’ll be back on to post as the scores for each event are announced.
I feel like a little schoolgirl. I’m about to meet NELSON DELLIS! dreamy eyes “Myyy Heeeroo…” Hahaha
Edit: by the way, I’ll be using my “junk paths” to train. Relatively weakly defined loci that I do not plan on using for the competition (I have all of my loci planned for each trial of each event)
Edit; good thing I built junk paths! For the first time, I was just befuddled by ghosts! Maybe that’s a good omen!
Okay first event names and faces I shot to memorize first and last of about 40/117 people, stupidly I think, and maybe scored I estimate 50-55 points out of the 80 (of234!) I shot for. Im Not out of the race of course but it didn’t really go better or worse than I thought. I might be landing in the 30th percentile (30% did worse than I)
Edit: went safe for 120 digits, got em, went for 140, epic fail. Very happy! Nelson got 194 first time around.
That’s brilliant! I just found out that you have been tied at 3rd in numbers. Congratulations!
Where can I follow it? I’m really excited but I don’t know if I can see any news from Holland.
What about the cards? I saw people on twitter memorizing cards. Also, will you make it to the last 8? It sounds like you are really tensed and doing worse then you expected.
Keep us updated.
Three people tied for third on digits, Ronnie, Santos, and me! My poetry was bottom half, and Nelson finished digits with 194 this year. Just finished poetry, attempted about 200 points of which I may have gotten half or more - IF I didn’t botch 3 of the early lines in a row, which stops scoring.
Edit:
Ok, bad news: I did the first deck w a metronome, which is usually quite comfortable. I set it to 32 BPM, and while putting the cards together I had 2 and a half blank loci! The pressure got to me. I could possible have reconstructed, though I don’t think so honestly, but while separating the piles to leave out the blank loci I got confused which was which, and made a mistake after the 27th card. I think a 2 minute deck would have virtually guaranteed a spot in the finals…
Anyway, second trial, which I had planned on being the risky one, I went REALLY slow, reviewed after every third loci. Then at the end, I did a full deck review before hitting the time. Getting the deck properly memorized is after all where the largest gap in points is.
So I finished in 3:05.
Before the poetry event, my combined score in the first two events put me in 12th overall. Really not to shabby considering how bad the N&F was! The 3:05 should push me up SLIGHTLY - and very much if any potential finalists were unable to do it at all. It’s going to be very close, hinging on the poetry score which I will know in 45 minutes
Slightly worse. But being new, I am getting some attention. Especially from Dave farrow who has approached me twice! Top 8? It’s going to be extremely close.
If anyone has more competition news, you can post it in this thread: USA Memory Championship Results 2013… There are live updates from Twitter there as well.