Can always try a category system, I think that may be the only way to “intuitively” link a person to a card suit/value without translating those elements into words or sounds. Hate to speak in absolutes, but there needs to be some way that “Diamond” narrows the full field down to a subset of people, and then “King” narrows it further down to a single person. Not sure how this would be accomplished without categorizing the suits and values.
For the suits:
Diamonds are rich people
Hearts are your close friends and family or people you find attractive
Clubs are crazy or aggressive people, that might beat you with clubs haha
Spades are maybe people who died untimely deaths, (dig their grave with a spade?)…
Then come up with a rationale for the values:
Odds values are male, evens are female,
King and Queen are a married couple…
So K/Q of Diamonds would be a rich couple, maybe Bill and Melinda Gates (pre-divorce.)
Here is a more detailed work up of this kind of card category system based on people. (This is coincidentally from “Tim blog”, which is a totally different Tim, not me, haha) : https://tim.blog/2013/02/07/how-to-memorize-a-shuffled-deck-of-cards-in-less-than-60-seconds/
That article is actually how I first started with cards and mapped my first PAO system. Eventually I wanted a way to just be able to READ the cards directly so I switched to Major phonetics for their ability to code every element in the PAAO associated with each card. Shadow System was the natural progression since it also lets you just read the phonetics, albeit with more complexity and much larger scale.
The category system is “simple” but it’s not necessarily the most efficient or fastest. You have to put in the work to associate the cards to an image no matter what system you go with. Weigh the pros and cons of each and see where you land. Sometimes the system that initially “clicks” the easiest, isn’t the best in the long run, but that depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want a system that you can learn quickly but has a lower ceiling in terms of speed and efficiency? Or are you ok with the learning phase taking longer but once it clicks, the ceiling is much higher?
For me, part of this process was the challenge of seeing if I could intake a large system like Shadow and the mental exercise that it would give. I don’t really have aspirations to formally compete, but looked at it as a personal challenge. The motivation has to be strong enough to keep you pushing through the learning process if you’re attempting a new or larger system.
