Greetings. We have all seen world class memory athletes easily memorize a sequence of random digits that run - in length- well into the hundreds of digits. This mind-blowing and seemingly impossible feat (at least to the uninitiated) is accomplished in mere minutes.
Now of course various systems have been devised for number memorization. What I wanted to know is if systems exist for memorizing a sequence of random characters that cannot be broken up into recognizable syllables? For example, how might one memorize the sequence āxassadfhdfuyfdafakduyfenqfjfdskvbandjfda qjsorighfvdmns?ā
I was also wondering if this could, possibly, be a new category at memory competitions i.e. random character memorization.
Quite a few of us on here have a PAO alphabet system, which can be mixed with a number PAO to produce an alphanumeric PAO.
Useful for number plates when combined with the numeric PAO.
Or
Spelling words which are foreign to your own language. Etc.
A few years ago I tutored a really enthusiastic Polish student who was studying Hungarian (a very very difficult language for most Europeans) he developed exactly the system Iām talking about. I do not personally think the sequence you mentioned in your post would be much of a challenge. Three letters per image
My own experience of developing an alphabet PAO grew out of learning to recite the Alphabet (the English Alphabet of 26 letters) BACKWARDS i e. ZYXWVUā¦ ETC in under four secondsā¦ Others have done the same thingā¦ Sort of party trick.
Zinidine Zidane headbutting a zebraā¦ Was my Zā¦
Wow. Amazing. Iāve restricted myself to the major and the PA(Dominic) system. Now the Dominic system is only restricted to 9 characters (A B C D E āSā G H āNā). I had no idea that the PAO system (which I had first heard about through Joshua Foer earlier this year) had the potential to utilize all 26 letters.
Now Iām super interested and excited to take my study and practice of memory to a new pinnacle! Thank you so much for the reply!!!
MM, Iāve never noticed anyone talking about a PAO alphabet system. I have an animal list for letters. But you are saying that people have 26 actions and 26 objects that represent letters, also? Is there something in that system that could indicate lower case or capital letter? Thanks.
Just because Raymond Keene and Tony Buzan didnāt include it in their vision for memory sports doesnāt mean there are not other disciplines and areas that, over the years (and long long before Buzan) have seen lots of systems emerge to recall things likeā¦ Alphabetsā¦ I havenāt looked but Iāve certainly discussed this on this forum, Including fast recital of the English, the old Spanish and Greek Alphabets backwards. As I mentioned above a student of Hungarian asked me to tutor him in this - must have been about five years ago.
I advocated a fixed route of twenty-six stages through a posh hotel, entrance, reception, foyer with different sectionsā¦ Along which Celebrities with the same initials for both their forename and surname were placed, doing stuff. To things. In order.
Things like:
Harry Houdini hanging and swinging eight feet up from a chandelier upside down in a straight jacketā¦ (H is the 8th letter)
Jessie J playing TENnis (J is the tenth)
Tina Turner belting out Simply The Best into twenty mics.
You get the pictureā¦ I hope.
After youāve got your people,. Fixed in your route you can then place them anywhere and combine Person with Action and Objects just like a numberic PAO.
Or combine with your numeric one.
Thereās a lot more to this than Iām able to say here,. But I hope that helps.
BTW the only memory āpersonā I have currently in my system is Katie Kermode (Having elevenses - oh so gentile while sheās translating "elevenā into lots of languages).
I actually just came up with an idea. What if each letter was assigned a number? In that case, you need only memorize the number and then translate it to a letter. For example, the letter āxā is the 24th letter of the alphabet.
So, for example, say we have the following sequence of letters:
k l o e g m p s h b
would translate to:
11 - 12 - 15 - 5 - 7 - 13 - 16 - 19 - 8 - 2
This idea can be expanded to upper-case letters by using numbers 27 onward.
This will tie in well with word-word memorizition that is demonstrated by Grandmaster Nelson Dellis:
To memorize alpha-numeric information like license plates, we can use two systems, namely the Dominic system Ā¶ and the Major system.
The dominic system, PA or PAO system, can be used for letters, and the Major system/ Ben system can be used for numerical information.
To be fair, in programming all Ascii symbols (alphanumeric as well as symbols like quotes dashes commas etc) have āordinalsā. Numbers the computer uses to represent each letter/symbol/number.
for instance, at a house down the street from me, I have the following memorized:
capital A to Z: 65 (the ordinal for A) to 90 (cap Zās ordinal)
lowercase a to z: 97 to 122
numbers 0 to 9: ordinals 48 to 57
and the space key is represented by the number 32.
in ascii its interesting to note that all lowercase numbers are exactly 32 (a space key) higher than their capital counterparts.
