At this time every year, Nelson Dellis asks his friends to dream up some information for him to memorise in practice for one of the most fun disciplines of the USA Memory Championship - it used to be called “Tea Party”, but now that’s been hijacked as the name of a political movement, it’s just called “Three Strikes You’re Out”. (click on the words for the full description)
But the idea is that you meet someone who tells you some information about themselves, and you have to remember it. The information mainly comes in threes, and falls into eight sections, as follows:
Name (first, middle, last): Date of Birth (month, date, year): Residence (city, state, zip code): Phone number (7 digits): Pet (type, color, name): Favorite 3 hobbies: Favorite car (year, make/model, color): Favorite 3 foods:
For example:
Robert Winston Rudyard December 18 1983 Springfield, Delaware, 59423 589-5123 Tabby cat called Arthur Swimming, cycling, skydiving 1983 Honda Accord, blue Pasta, turtle soup, cheesecake
If everyone volunteers an example or two, we can all have fun practicing memorising them! So please chip in with some suggestions! The best ones are a nice mixture of the extremely silly and the mundane.
In the “training” tab up above, there is a script that Josh made which randomizes information for six people at a time
But here’s mine:
Lester Andrew Purelung
March 30, 1988
San Marcos, Texas 78666
972.746.6590
Hairless Rat named Robin
Unicycle Football, Bass Guitar, Scientific literature
2010 Blue Nissan Versa Hatchback with 87,430 miles on it
Salmon, Fried butter, Happy Tracks Flavored Ice Cream
Mary Sue Pendergast January 3, 1960 Florham Park, New Jersey 07932 989-9942 White Yorkshire terrier named Chi-chi Writing poetry, Dungeons & Dragons, scrapbooking 1935 Yellow Studebaker Commander French fries, waffles, chicken curry
Amelia Michelle Jones January 17, 1987 Whitesburg, Kentucky, 41858 802-7501 Red iguana named Smaug Favorite 3 hobbies: Reading, ballet, hunting Green 2010 Ford F-250 Shrimp, venison, sour cream
Since there is interest in training for this event, I spent a little time last night rewriting the script so you can now hide the answers and test yourself:
Let me know what you think and if there is any way I could make it more useful…
I don’t actually use it, but it looks fantastic. In my humble opinion, it could be improved by adding a button that shows all the information in a table. As in, after you memorize, press hide all, type the information out, then click one button to show all the hidden information. But still works amazingly. Thanks for the script Josh.
Hi, what´s the best way to train for this event?
example: I assume that for the name is like name and face event, date of birth and telephone are just numbers, but the rest?
(food, car, pet and hobbies) how to memorice that? is there some kind of system for this event?
Thank you!!! The only things I would change, and please don’t go to the trouble unless you want to, would be to get rid of the Gender and Telephone Number, add the month of hire to the year for Employment, and make the order of the info as follows:
If anybody is interested in practicing this event on your own (personally this was the event I found most interesting and the one I practiced the most prior to the USAMC) this is the workbook I created to help myself train. Tea Party Workbook - Google Sheets
The sheet autofills answers for the tea party guests (this was designed for the 2021 event parameters which included more information per person and 1 less competitor than 2022). The information is drawn from formulas in another tab, which draw from tables that are in hidden tabs (feel free to browse around and see what’s in there). Any questions just reply and tag me and I’ll do my best to keep on top of answering.
Name (first, middle, last):
