The Major System I show in my videos is basically this one. It is just slightly modified from the standard one, but it’s perfect for Portuguese. If you modified it too much, you wouldn’t be capable of using premade lists that are available online. For instance, you may use mine:
Yes, exactly! You understood it well, and that isn’t a problem at all. You should always focus on the sound. Close your eyes and let your ears guide you. When trying to produce words, forget the appearance of the letters, and focus on pronouncing the sounds.
Tim is totally right on this one, as usual. For instance, I had a 2-digit list when I broke that record, and most of the names had more than 2 consonants. Now that I have a 3-digit list, I needed to throw away so many associations that I practiced for so long. If you are interested in the world of memory competitions, then I’d recommend you to discard words with more consonants.