New Two-Card System: 2-block (1352 element), Simple Phonetic Structure

[TheHumanTim]

After a recent thread discussion between @Mike4, @fred2, and myself about a new double2block card system idea, I’ve been thinking about the different structures of large card systems, namely the Ben System (by @Zoomy) and the Shadow System (by @LociInTheSky)… with the goal of simplifying conversion/construction rules.

I recently reached my goal of learning Shadow and using it to memorize a deck in under one minute and as I reflected on that process the thing that stood out to me as one of the biggest hurdles for onboarding Shadow was getting used to the different phonetic structures required depending on card values.

In the last week or so I’ve started looking at the Ben system more closely and really liked the consistency of the rules for constructing phonetics and reading the cards that it uses. The thing I’m not as big of a fan of is the use of vowels and how values can stand for consonants or vowels. Also the scope of a full 2704 pair system is still a bit daunting.

I wanted a way to have a card value represent one and only one value so that when you looked at the pair, there was no conditional translating needed. I also wanted to use only the standard Major System sounds and keep them as closely linked to their original number associations as possible.

I’ve come up with a way to make this happen via a two-block system that allows for simple construction with “only” 1352 elements to learn. (I’ll assume for the purposes of this thread that you’re familiar with the concept behind 2-block systems.)

Here’s the basic rules for construction. They’ll be quite familiar to those who know Major or who are familiar with Shadow:

SuitPair,BlackFirst	SuitPair,Redfirst	SuitPairSound
		S/Z
		T/D/TH
	♢	N
♢	♢	M
		L
	♢	J/SH/CH
	♢♢	K/G
♢	♢	P/B

Card1Value	Card1Sound
10	S/Z
Ace	T/D/TH
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	ch/sh
7	K
8	F
9	P/B
Jack	juh
Queen	V
King	guh

Card2Value	Card2Sound
10	S/Z
Ace	T/D/TH
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	ch/sh
7	K
8	F
9	P/B
Jack	juh
Queen	V
King	guh

In order to account for the 3 picture cards expanding the phonetics needed to 13, I split three of the “multi-phonetic” numbers and assigned one sound exclusively to those picture cards. So for example, 7 is typically the K or the hard G (“guh”) sound in standard Major. In this card system, 7 is now ONLY generating the K sound. The King now generates the G guh sound exclusively. Similarly the 8 now ONLY gives you F while the Queen picks up the V, and the 6 keeps the CH and SH, while Jacks are assigned the J or soft G “juh” sound.

In this way every single card pair can be read by first looking at the suit combo, then value 1, then value 2, just like the Ben system, but using almost all traditional Major mapping.

This is a “cards first” approach. The goal was not to create an “all in one” system, so it doesn’t give you a full direct conversion to all 1000 3-digit numbers, and I doubt a binary system could be easily pulled from this, but if you have a 3-digit major list, you can directly import 800 words into this system.

This idea is literally like 2 days old right now, so there are probably a bunch of things I’m not considering in the design. It may not even be original, if there are other threads where this has been done already, please let me know. Either way, I’d welcome anyone’s constructive thoughts or questions on it!

[Mike4 (Maike Anthony)]

Good work! Congratulations on developing this system!

@TheHumanTim

In order to account for the 3 picture cards expanding the phonetics needed to 13, I split three of the “multi-phonetic” numbers and assigned one sound exclusively to those picture cards.

One of the reasons why I abandoned the idea of splitting phonemes in our old discussion was because I’d be using two different Major Systems for different disciplines (numbers/cards/binary). This idea made me feel quite uncomfortable. Idk if this bothers you too, though.

@TheHumanTim

This is a “cards first” approach. The goal was not to create an “all in one” system, so it doesn’t give you a full direct conversion to all 1000 3-digit numbers, and I doubt a binary system could be easily pulled from this, but if you have a 3-digit major list, you can directly import 800 words into this system.

I understand this is supposed to be a “cards first” approach, but I do think you could encode all 1000 3-digit numbers using this. Since there are 8 pairs of suit-pairs, you left R and F/V out, so you could use them when encoding the hundreds of numbers, but they would stay unused in card memorization. After this change, I believe it’s possible to pull a 10-digit binary system from this too by applying variable image stacking to binary numbers.

Btw, I thought you disliked variable image stacking, so I suppose you don’t have the intention to apply this system yourself, or have you changed your mind?

[TheHumanTim]

@Mike4

This idea made me feel quite uncomfortable. Idk if this bothers you too, though.

It does a little, haha, which is why I didn’t “change” associations with the numbers, just “subtracted.” I’m not sure how this would work in terms of causing cognitive interferece with my already locked-in number system. My thought is that it actually won’t have much of a detrimental effect, since I’m not associating any picture card pairs with any numbers at all, I don’t think they’d interfere.

My biggest issue is that there are some images involving those split phonetics that will move from what I’ve locked in as numbers onto those face cards. Like 277 is “Neck Guy” for me. In this system, 277 in this card system could map phonetically to both

and

for the 7/K the image would be Neck Guy since the 7King gives the K+G sound, but the 7/7 would be something like “NiKe Cleats” because 77 is K+K. If i was looking to read the cards and learn number associations from them, then this would clash with my prelearned neckguy image and its strong association with that 77 part of 277.

This ambiguity is ok though I think, because I’m not recommending using the card images as the number images. This is definitely a bit of a weakness in the system, but its the tradeoff for easier reading I think.

@Mike4

I do think you could encode all 1000 3-digit numbers using this. Since there are 8 pairs of suit-pairs, you left R and F/V out, so you could use them when encoding the hundreds of numbers, but they would stay unused in card memorization.

I was trying to figure out a way to do this with just the images involved in the card set. Are you saying its possible to repurpose those or would they just be additional “numbers only” images? So you’d use the 800 of the 1352 card pairs that are non-picture cards, then an additional 200 images for the missing 400’s and 800’s. 552 cardpair images would be unassigned when it comes to numbers, (which would be all of the pairs containing picture cards?) I think this is ok because you can sort of just mentally ignore picture cards when thinking about numbers.

Shadow is ingenious in being able to directly pull from 992 numbers to give you words that can slot right into card pairs associations. But this comes at the expense of having to rearrange the reading structure when picture cards are involved. This is the part I want to eliminate.

@Mike4

I thought you disliked variable image stacking, so I suppose you don’t have the intention to apply this system yourself, or have you changed your mind?

For VIS… I’m coming around to it. I’m probably not going to use this system since I’ve already made so much progress with Shadow, but I’m viewing it as a potential Shadow alternative for someone who doesn’t want to deal with the extra rules or who doesn’t care about a single integrated card/number/binary system.

For max efficiency, I think Ben or Ben style is ultimately the way to go. True 2704 image system, no ambiguity, consistent CVC phonetic structure minimizes subvocalizing and is read the same no matter the card values, whatever connection and quantity you want in your scenes… But this would be an option for those who don’t want to take that full dive.

I’m debating trying to eventually go for a modified Ben, trying to keep as many similarities with Shadow as possible. I’ve actually started building out that list for myself. We’ll see if I want to start from scratch again! If I did, it would be to go for that, not start over to replace Shadow with another 2-block system. At this point, all of this tinkering is just as a fun mental exercise. I’m still planning on pushing my speed with Shadow for a while and see how much I can continue to progress.

[TheHumanTim]

As a sidenote:

I imported all of the words from my list for Shadow that would map to this new system along with whatever gaps could be filled by my Person/Object 3-digit major list. I ended up with the 800 direct maps, plus 214 words that I’d already figured out but didn’t use in Shadow. So that would leave me with 338 completely new words to map, and then 552 totally new associations to make in order to switch to this system.

Could probably do it in a couple months if I committed to it.

Maybe it would be like knowing two languages. You’d know two phonetic structures for the same image… Like Water and Agua. People have no problem switching between multiple languages depending on context, so why not for cards too? Although, I guess its more like knowing two dialects of the same language.

If I did end up switching to this system I’d likely abandon Shadow. I don’t think I’d regret the time I’ve spent with Shadow, but damn, it would be a lot of effort to pretty much erase just to get back to where I am now. This is why I think I’d go for broke and work on a true 2704 next.

[Mike4 (Maike Anthony)]

@TheHumanTim

I was trying to figure out a way to do this with just the images involved in the card set

I think this is not possible. There may be 1352 pairs of cards, but only 800 with number cards. If you try to use picture cards, you’d need a system with rules, which is what you’re trying to avoid.

@TheHumanTim

Are you saying its possible to repurpose those or would they just be additional “numbers only” images.

They would be additional “numbers only” images. I don’t think it would be possible to repurpose without shadow-system-like rules. There would be just 200 additional images, and they would make the system universal, like Ben’s.

@TheHumanTim

For max efficiency, I think Ben or Ben style is ultimately the way to go.

Also, I’d like to point out this system could be turned into a hybrid system (1352 / 2704). Notice that all sounds that represent pairs of suit-pairs are phonetic pairs (like p/b and s/z), except for N, M, and L. You could make both N and M represent and , make both R and L represent and , and make F/V represent and . After you do this, you could make the first phoneme represent the suit-pair that starts with a black suit, while the second phoneme would represent the suit-pair that starts with a red suit. For instance, would be S, while would be Z.

If someone is not ready to memorize 2704 images, they could use the variable image stacking strategy and use only half the phonemes. When they decided to memorize the other half, they would just stop applying variable image stacking and use the other phonemes instead.

In this situation, my previous tip for making it an all in one system wouldn’t work anymore because the phonemes F/V and R would encode suit-pairs. To address this, you would need two sounds to encode the remaining 200 number only images. The phoneme H would be a good candidate. For the other 100, you could use W or maybe split the phonemes representing 6. Notice that you’re actually using 2 phonetic pairs to encode and : ch / j (CHuck / John) and sh / j (SHine / pleaSure). If you used only the first phonetic pair to encode suit-pairs, CH would represent (CHuck) while J would represent (John). In this way, you could use SH/J to encode the remaining 100 number only images.

Tbh, the j-like sound in words like “pleaSure” almost never (maybe never?) appear in English at the beginning of words, so the sound SH would need to fill all those spaces on its own. This isn’t very hard though because this is quite a common sound, even more if you take characters from animes, mangas, or japanese games.

If you dislike all this phonetic tinkering, you could use person/object distinction. For the suit-pair that starts black, use a person; for the one that starts red, use an object. This would be even simpler, and you’d have an all-in-one true 2-card system.

@TheHumanTim

I’m debating trying to eventually go for a modified Ben, trying to keep as many similarities with Shadow as possible.

You had told me you had two 1352-long lists of people and objects, right? I think that idea is quite good, even better than a modified Ben because those lists would work for numbers as well, but the idea of not having any rules in a system is quite enticing indeed.

[TheHumanTim]

@Mike4

I’d like to point out this system could be turned into a hybrid system (1352 / 2704). Notice that all sounds that represent pairs of suit-pairs are phonetic pairs (like p/b and s/z), except for N, M, and L…

This is a really great observation. Gonna play around with this idea a bit. Immediate challenge I see is that only having a single starting phonetic makes it REALLY tough to come up with words when building. Inclusion of consonant blends could remedy that a bit…

@Mike4

You had told me you had two 1352-long lists of people and objects, right?

I do. All based on shadow / major phonetics, so they wouldnt translate to a Ben or CVC one-syllable system, but I’ll have to think some more about how that could work. They could turn the structure of Shadow into a true 2704, but would need to disassociate a ton of pairs and relearn the second match for them…

I’m very enticed by the CVC structure because as I’ve gotten faster its noticable how much more time it takes to read a pair like “nanobot” than it does for “sauce.” Both represent two cards, but processing time from reading to visualizing is way faster for that single syllable to trigger the image.

[Mike4 (Maike Anthony)]

@TheHumanTim

Immediate challenge I see is that only having a single starting phonetic makes it REALLY tough to come up with words when building. Inclusion of consonant blends could remedy that a bit…

Indeed. I believe making person/object distinction would be much better. I know you’re perfectionist, who doesn’t like making many exceptions, and having a single starting phonetic would require a lot of cheating. Dividing between people and objects would fix this challenge.

@TheHumanTim

I’m very enticed by the CVC structure because as I’ve gotten faster its noticable how much more time it takes to read a pair like “nanobot” than it does for “sauce.”

That indeed sounds like a nice advantage of the Ben system. I wonder if this avantage will matter that much in the long term. On the one hand, I remember one of Ben Pridmore’s post here where he said that he still subvocalizes the names of the images after all these years; he also said that the names with a single syllable were still faster than the others. On the other hand, many top athelets don’t use the Ben system, which may mean that, after a lot of practice, subvocalization is not used or is not necessary in non-CVC systems.

[TheHumanTim]

@Mike4

I wonder if this avantage will matter that much in the long term…

I’m sure you’re right about this aspect. Braden Adams can hit 15 seconds for a deck using two-block shadow with all kinds of exceptions, multi-syllable phrasing and all. I’ve definitely seen several dozen pairs become instant for myself where I immediately visualize the image before saying the word or before I’m done with the first syllable or two. So I think this is definitely true, fluency tops all system efficiencies.

I’m not looking to get to that hyper elite speed tier where shaving tenths of a second off overall times will be the difference in competition standings, so it really shouldn’t matter that much to be. But as you noted, I’m for sure a perfectionist. Or maybe its that I can see the potential inefficiencies and want to know at least “how” I could do away with them even if I can’t or won’t apply the fixes to my own practice. So maybe I’m a “hypothetical / theoretical perfectionist” haha

[TheHumanTim]

So I think I’m going to revisit this and try this out, with some modifications from the original post…

Words are always constructed in the same way: value1 + value2 + SuitCombo.

The original intent was to always have the values represent the same sound(s) whether they were first or second in the pair. I’ve scrapped this idea in favor of much easier word construction via using some alternate sounds for the picture cards. I don’t mind this change. The most important thing was to read any pair’s indices in the same “direction” and this accomplishes that goal very well.

Pairs with picture cards in the second position will generate words with just two consonant sounds. It’s important to limit those words to just the two consonants, no trailers. For the others it’s ok to make words or phrases with trailing unused consonants as anything over three consonants will be rounded down to the first three.

Suit Combo phonetic mapping is arbitrary, I kept the suit mapping from the original Shadow System. If you want to experiment, you can assign them to whatever Major sounds you want.

Here are the updated phonetics:

Card1Value	Card1Sound
10	S/Z
Ace	T
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	J/CH/SH
7	K/G
8	F/V
9	P/B
Jack	D
Queen	W
King	H

Card2Value	Card2Sound
10	S/Z
Ace	T/D/TH
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	J/CH/SH
7	K/G
8	F/V
9	P/B
Jack	AY (pay), AH (spa), AW (saw), OW (ouch), AA (back)
Queen	OH (grow), OO (tool), UH (bug)
King	EE (bee), EH (beg), IH (big)

SuitCombo, BlackFirst	SuitCombo, RedFirst	Suit Sound
		S/Z
		T/D/TH
		N
		M
		L
		J/SH/CH
		K/G
		P/B

[TheHumanTim]

After a week of building and playing around with this, I’m making one change…

Instead of picture cards in the second position representing vowels, they are back to using the missing consonants from the suit pairs, so F/V for Jacks and R for Queens, with Kings going silent.

This is going to require ONE deviation for how to read the indices, but after practicing it for just a little bit, I find that I don’t mind it at all. It simplifies the word selection and causes less confusion than having multiple vowel sounds as options.

This also allows many more 3-digit words to be imported, and also because I’ve already got the H words locked in from Shadow, it makes things even easier. The only brand new words that I need to learn are the new W’s for Queen-first pairs, and whichever new words I needed to make for either the specific T-first or D-first first words for Ace-first and Jack-first pairs respectively.

Here’s the new and hopefully final mapping for the second card value sounds (note again that Aces in second card position can be pronounced as T or D or TH. They are not restricted to just making the T sound as they are when they appear first in the pair.)

Card2Value	Card2Sound
10	S/Z
Ace	T/D/TH
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	J/CH/SH
7	K/G
8	F/V
9	P/B
Jack	F/V
Queen	R
King	silent

The new reading rules are:

Rule 1: Always start reading with the first value.
Rule 2: If the second card is a picture card, always end with it. If not, end with the suit combo sound.

Thats it.

[TheHumanTim]

Ok, some stats for all you fellow nerds out there along with some musings:

At the time of this post, my list contains:

1352 total unique elements.
405 are “characters.”
947 are “objects.”

I intentionally prioritized objects as often as possible. I’ve found that I have a much easier time during recall with scenes that contain objects than I do with people. It’s easier for me to accurately recall a 5+ object chain than it is to differentiate a scene with 2+ people. By having a high Object:Person ratio, more than 2 to 1, I’ve reduced the chances of having to stack people via the 2-block approach.

I’ve also very carefully selected my characters to be vivid, unique, and easily and clearly “actionable.” I’ve avoided using just “this guy I know” who doesn’t have any special “extra” connections or distinct ways of acting. In a sense, my “characters” are really almost combined “people/actions.”

Let me give a quick example of what I mean and how I think this will improve recall with people.

One of my characters is this guy:

This is Travis Barker, drummer for pop-punk band Blink 182. He’s very visually unique, but he’s also got a very distinct “animation” to him. Whenever he appears in a scene, I’ll picture him drumming super-fast on whatever element follows in the deck. By using his built-in incidental animation, it gives me a second hook to identify him during recall. One important other thing… I only have two drummers in my image set. Travis and John Bonham from Led Zeppelin.

Bonham is very different visually and his drumming style is also different from Travis’. If I’m in the recall phase and all I remember is that the person was a drummer, I should be able to distinguish Travis from Bonham based on how the action/interaction feels.

I also don’t have anyone else who is heavily tattooed in my list so if that is the “impression” that I retain during recall, I can pretty easily get to Travis by thinking “person… tattooed…”

Many if not all of my characters have something like this quality about them to boost their identifiability. Darth Vader, The Wizard Of Oz, Sherlock Holmes, The Mummy, Tarzan, Judge Judy… they all stand out and are uniquely identifiable in multiple ways, much better than “my neighbor” or “guy from work” whose name happens to fit with the necessary phonetic.

More nerd stats:
435 one-syllable words
917 two-syllables (almost all trochees)

This was a big point taken from Lance’s new Trochee system where the goal was to reduce sub-vocalization. I’ve reworked many of my words to make them as short as possible so that when “reading” the deck, I can maintain a steady rhythm. This was my biggest issue with the Shadow System. Those S-blend words just took too long to read and subvocalize and always acted like a speed bump when going through the deck, especially having to trace the indices in reverse with my eyes when reading them. Now with this new structural set-up, everything lends itself to simple phrasing. By always starting with the first card’s value phonetic, there is way less of that back and forth and having to slam into reverse whem picture cards show up second.

Gonna work on recognition speed now, looking to whittle it down to less than one second per pair, which will make it possible to get through the deck in under 30 seconds. I really want to see if I can break into that range of times eventually and I think this system will get me there. Not ready to set a hard deadline for that, I want to see how the re-mapping goes with these elements first and then I’ll figure out a realistic timeframe for trying to push the speed.

[TheHumanTim]

I actually really like the W words generated by Queen-first pairs! I thought it would be much harder to break the habit of reading first-position Queens as R’s than it actually is.

It has also been pretty easy to switch reading Jack-first as D’s.

What has been a little bit challenging is NOT reading a D sound on the Ace-first pairs. They had formerly mapped to T/D as a 1 in Major, but in this system they need to be isolated to just the T sound in order to tell them apart from the Jacks.

I’ve tagged all of the Ace-first and Jack-first pairs in Anki so that I can review just them intermixed. This is helping rewire my instinct to really lock in that A = T and J = D.

Haha, just reading this over makes me think of how bizzare this would sound to someone unfamiliar with this world of memory systems. I remember being that person not too long ago and being fascinated by these explanations in what seemed like secret codes and alien hieroglyphic languages. For anyone reading this that may be like “I have no idea what any of this means”, don’t be shy about asking questions and if it intrigues you, give it a try!

[TheHumanTim]

Considering making yet another tweak. Its early days of learning these new associations, so now is the time to optimize before they get too reflexive…

I really like knowing that Jack-first pairs ALWAYS start with D, that Queen-first pairs ALWAYS start with W, that King-first pairs ALWAYS start with H, and I’m starting to get used to and like having Ace-first pairs ALWAYS start with T. My 10-first pairs happened to all start with the S sound as well.

SO… what about the other multi-option Major System phonetics?

Well, I just went through and found words that work for 7-first pairs so that they ALWAYS start with the K sound, and the 9-first pairs ALWAYS start with the P sound. I feel like being strict with these as well this would “reflexize” reading those pairs much quicker because there’s no splitting focus wondering which consonant option they map to.

I’m going to look at 6 and 8, but even if I can’t isolate those, I still have 11 out of the 13 starting options locked into a single sound…

10 (0) = S
A (1) = T
2 = N
3 = M
4 = R
5 = L
6 = J/CH/SH
7 = K
8 = F/V
9 = P
J = D
Q = W
K = H

An important thing to re-emphasize is that these mappings are only for the FIRST card’s value. If an Ace appears second there is still flexibility to sound it as T or D or TH. This makes word construction MUCH easier than strictly limiting all instances of a value to a single sound.

I’m gonna mess around with the 6’s and 8’s and see if I can break them up as well, that’d be pretty sweet.

[Mike4 (Maike Anthony)]

I really like this idea, Tim! Congrats for your dedication and ingenuity.

@TheHumanTim

I’m gonna mess around with the 6’s and 8’s and see if I can break them up as well, that’d be pretty sweet.

I think you can totally do that. For 6, CH/SH would be easier to make words with if you got lots of foreign words from Asian languages. In English, though, my guess is that J is easier to be at the beginning. For 8, I’ve noticed that most of my characters in my 3-digit PO starts with F, so it’s probably the most common one.

@TheHumanTim

that’d be pretty sweet.

I believe in you, Tim! I thought the hardest thing ever would be to come up with so many words starting with W, but you got it!

[TheHumanTim]

@Mike4

I think you can totally do that.

I just did it!!

Just completed the list for all the J starters and all F starters! You were right that J’s and F’s would be the “easiest” to use.

The J’s were tougher to fill in than the F’s were. My first instinct is to read 8’s as F’s so there were already lots of usable words in my list already and it was easier to find F words haha. Some of them are a stretch, like 882 is “FiFi, No!” which I think will be a ridiculously groomed poodle peeing on a rug, but what matters is they follow the phonetics precisely and sprung from my brain fairly instinctively. I’ve learned to try to just go with the first thing that pops in there and figure out a good image for it afterwards.

Now I’ll have to cross check alllll of these new specific starters with my existing images, but I think there are only a few that I may need to swap around.

For example, for 914 I had “butter”, but now with it being a P starter I have it as “potter” with the image instinctively being Harry Potter… But I already had Harry as my image for 375, “muggle”, so I’ll have to change the image for “muggle” to probably be Hermione. Thankfully I haven’t had Hermione as an image for anything previously, so the cascade of changes stops there.

Sometimes two words force the same image and I need to change a word. When building Shadow out the first time I had Hamill and Luke for two different pairs and try as I might to make myself see Luke Wilson or Dorothy Hamill, I just kept seeing this guy for both words no matter what:

So I changed “luke” to “lock” and it became a padlock. No more issues. So now I have to look for similar conflicts with these couple hundred new words… And update anki… And find images.. Ugh.

Aw, who am I kidding. I love this part!

I was pretty careful and intentional with the images I picked to keep them very distinct from each other. Hopefully I can maintain that for these too. My only initial thing I don’t love is that I’ve added a lot of people in place of objects for some of these. Lots of JoSH and JeFF people in the J’s. A few PHiL’s in the F’s… But as long as I can pick out some distinct features to key in on for each of them, I should be ok.

[TheHumanTim]

So here’s the new structural details all in one place.

(EDIT: added a link to a full word list doc)

Please note that the D, W, and H sounds for the picture cards in first position, and the F/V, R, and silence for the picture cards in second position can be swapped around however you see fit. If you want to make Queens-first D and Jacks-second Silent, thats totally fine. You’ll still end up with the same complete phonetic combinations for all the pairs.

Same with the suits.

I assigned the suit combos their sounds based on what I was used to from the Shadow System. But, you could assign them however you’d like. If you want / to make the P/B sound, go for it! The only restriction is that the “leftover” phonetics after assigning the 8 suit maps will need to be used for pIcture cards in second position. Thats why there is no F/V or R suit combo sound for me and why those sounds are used for my Jacks and Queens in second position. (A little more detailed explanation of this further down…)

Anyways, here’s the info:

Card1Value	Card1Sound
10	S
Ace	T
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	J
7	K
8	F
9	P
Jack	D
Queen	W
King	H

Card2Value	Card2Sound
10	S/Z
Ace	T/D/TH
2	N
3	M
4	R
5	L
6	J/CH/SH
7	K/G
8	F/V
9	P/B
Jack	F/V
Queen	R
King	silent

SuitCombo, BlackFirst	SuitCombo, RedFirst	Suit Sound
		S/Z
		T/D/TH
		N
		M
		L
		J/SH/CH
		K/G
		P/B

Note on how suit combos are paired together to make this 2-block system (taken from Shadow):

If the suit combo is dual color, its counterpart is just a mirror image reversal of it.

reversed is
reversed is
reversed is
reversed is

So that is cool for half the pairs, but what about the other half that have both suits of the same color?

Well each suit has a “counterpart” suit of the opposite color:
goes with
goes with

When both suits of a pair have the same color, you convert them to their counterpart suits to find their matches.

counterparts are
counterparts are
counterparts are
counterparts are

Assign a Major System phonetic to each set. You’ll use 8 of the 10 major mappings and the remaining two get assigned to two of the picture cards when those appear in the second position.

Reading rules:

Rule 1: Always start reading with the first value.
Rule 2: If the second card is a picture card, always end with it. If not, end with the suit combo sound.

Here are visual examples of how to read the four card types, ##, P#, PP, #P. Just follow the arrows.

[##] (Number/Number Pair)

951 - PeLT

[P#] (Picture/Number Pair)

W49 - WaRP

[PP] (Picture/Picture Pair)

D64 - DaSHeR

[#P] (Number/Picture Pair)

914 - PoTTeR

Here’s a doc that lays out all the pronunciations and contains a word list for every pair:

New 2-card simple structure system

[TheHumanTim]

Only 140 total new words needed to align each starting value with a single phonetic.

Thats not bad at all. I think I’m ok with overwriting these associations again (this will be like the 4th or 5th time for some of these pairs!)

63 changes to make all 6-first pairs start with J sound.
42 changes to make all 9-first pairs start with P sound.
21 changes to make all 8-first pairs start with F sound.
14 changes fo make all 7-first pairs start with K sound.

64 objects were replaced by people.
17 people were replaced by objects.

The other 59 elements were replaced by the same element type (new person replacing an old person or new object replacing an old object.)

Net gain of 47 people, upping the split to 900 objects and 452 people. Thats still basically a 2:1 ratio of objects to people. I can live with that.

[TheHumanTim]

Found some better replacement words today that included 10 or so objects instead of bland people and was able to repurpose some older or alternate images for many of these new words.

All told it looks like I only need to find 64 brand new images.

Not too bad.

Will hopefully have them in and ready to start working with over the weekend.

[Mike4 (Maike Anthony)]

Btw, Tim, will you share your whole peg list for this project? I feel that this would be a HUGE plus for future users.

[TheHumanTim]

Yeah I will once I work it a bit.