Intro: The basic technique of memorisation used by all competitors for the events involving numbers and cards is to convert the raw data into mental images of people or objects, and visualising these images at consecutive points along a mental journey. A basic technique is described in the following pages. There are many other techniques, all still based on the same general principle, and there are any number of websites and books that describe them. Different systems work better for different people - experiment with the possibilities and see which works best for you.
Journey: For this system, we're going to place two images, each of them corresponding to a playing card, on each point of the journey. To memorise a pack of cards, then, you first need to think of a journey or route with 26 easily-remembered locations. All the routes I use are either around different rooms of large buildings (my old school provides three routes - the first one starts in room 6, then moves onto room 5, room 4, the hallway, the top of the stairs, the bottom of the stairs, the downstairs hallway, room 3, room 2, room 1 and so on. Your old school was probably laid out in a different kind of way, but you get the idea), or around a town (corner shop, roundabout, t-junction, newsagents etc). As long as it's a familiar kind of journey and you can mentally picture the 26 points in the right order, it doesn't matter where you go. Write it down, so you've got it handy to come back to after the second bit of preparation. Here's another of mine as an example. If you know your way around Skegness, you might be able to follow mine around the town.
Images (cards): We're going to create 52 images, and associate each of them with a different playing card, so that every time you see the ace of hearts, you'll think of a hat, and visualise it at the appropriate point of your route. The reason for creating images, rather than just visualising the playing cards, is that playing cards all look very similar, and they can get mixed up in your brain very easily. The seven of clubs is a lot like the eight of clubs, but a key isn't anything like a cone. The key is to learn a distinct image for each card, that can be easily remembered when it comes to memorising.
But it's all very well to say 'The ace of hearts is a hat', but how do you remember that? There's a method for converting cards (and, on the next page, numbers) into images in a way that will jog your memory every time you use it.
The first thing to look at is the suit of the cards. All the hearts will be turned into a word that starts with H, all the clubs into a word that starts with C, and so on. We'll start with the suit of hearts. Each card will be represented by a word starting with a 'h' sound. The next sound in the word is determined by the number of the card, as follows.
Choose your own words - each one should be the first that comes into your mind when you think "What starts with 'ha'?". That way, whenever you see the ace of hearts, you'll think of that word, and the picture that goes with it.
Ace = 'a' - hat, hand, ham, hankie, Harry
2 = 'e' - hen, hem, heron, hell, head
3 = 'i' - hippo, hill, history
4 = 'o' - holly, hockey stick, hog
5 = 'u' - hut, hook, hummingbird, hubcap
6 = 'A' - hay, haze, hake, hail
7 = 'E' - heater, he-man, heel
8 = 'I' - hi-fi, high-chair, hide
9 = 'O' - hoe, hose, hotel
10 = 'U' or 'oo' - hoop, hula, hooter, Hugh
Jack = 'ow' - house, hound, howler
Queen = 'or' - horse, horn, hawk
King = 'ar' - heart, harp, harness
It's important to note that it's the sound of the word we're interested in, not the spelling. Our brains process sounds a lot quicker than they process written words. So 'hook' can be the five of hearts, but shouldn't be the four. When you've picked a word for each card, make sure you can visualise a picture of that object or person. Know what kind of hat you're thinking of, what colour, what shape, what size. And once you're happy with the hearts, here are some suggestions for the other three suits:
| Card Value/Suit | Clubs | Spades | Diamonds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ace | cat, can, camel, carrot | sand, Sam, sack, sash | Dan, dam, dagger, dad |
| 2 | kettle, Ken, kestrel, Kelly | sellotape, settee, setter | Den, deckchair, Del |
| 3 | kitten, kiss, kipper | scissors, signature, signet, sieve | digger, dinner, dipper |
| 4 | cot, comic, collar, cog | sausage, salt, sock | dot, doll, dog, dock |
| 5 | custard, cutter, cook | soot, sun, sucker, sub | dummy, duck |
| 6 | case, Katy, cane, cake | safe, sail, sabre, sailor | daisy, date, Dale |
| 7 | key, keel, keeper | sea, seal, seed, seat | Dean, DJ, demon |
| 8 | kite, Kylie | cyclops, silo, sine wave | dice, dial, diver |
| 9 | coat, cone, coal, cobra | soap, sofa, sole | dough, donut, dome |
| 10 | cue, cooler, cube | suit, sumo, soup | dew, dune |
| Jack | cow, cowl, cowboy | sow, sound | dowel, down |
| Queen | core, corn, cork | saw, sauce, sorter | door, doorman, Dawn |
| King | car, cart, calf, card | sari, sergeant, sarnie, Sara dart, | dalek, dark |
Make sure that all your 52 images are different enough from each other that you won't get them confused. Then see if you can remember the whole list without looking at it. If you get stuck, you can just think 'what starts with ca?', and the word should come back to you. Get a pack of cards and pick one at random a few times, and see how quickly you can visualise the appropriate image.
Combining images and journey: Take a pack of cards and shuffle it well (they're easier to memorise if they're not shuffled, but people aren't nearly as impressed that way)
Turn over the first two cards. We're going to put two images at each point on the route. For example, the first two cards in the pack I've got in front of me are the eight of diamonds and the three of clubs. So, depending on your list and your journey, you might imagine something like a dice rolling towards a kitten on the platform of Skegness railway station. Make sure you can tell what order the two images come in - have the first card-image be on the left, or on top of the second one. And be consistent with this throughout the 26 pairs of images. It's good to have the images interact or come into contact with each other, because it makes the whole tableau more memorable.
Moving onto the next stop on my journey, which is a café on Skegness train station which closed down years ago but used to have a Donkey Kong machine in the corner long after everywhere else in Skegness had moved on to more modern video games, I've got a digger (three of diamonds) unearthing a safe (six of spades) in the middle of the café. If the cards had been the other way around, I would have had the safe contain a miniature digger. After a bit of practice, the images develop rules about how they relate to each other in either sequence, and it becomes impossible to get them the wrong way round.
Go on through the pack until you've imagined 26 pairs of images at 26 points on your journey. Look through the pack again another time or two and see how many you can remember, then see if you can say every card before you turn it over and look at it. Easy, isn't it?
For numbers, we'll create an image for each pair of two digits. The first digit is a consonant sound, allocated by what's known as the 'Major System':
And the second digit is a vowel sound, using the same system as with cards:
In this way, we already have 40 of the 100 required images worked out - the images for the ace to ten of clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades are the same as the images for 70-79, 10-19, 80-89 and 00-09.
Once you've created these images, numbers can be memorised in the same way as cards, using a journey.
Images (binary numbers): Memorising binary digits is just a short stretch of the imagination from memorising decimal digits. With only 1s and 0s to deal with, we can take several at a time. The easiest way to do this is to convert each group of three binary digits into a decimal number from 0-7, and just use the same images (only 64 images will be needed)
001 = 1 = t/d
010 = 2 = n
011 = 3 = m
100 = 4 = r
101 = 5 = l
110 = 6 = j/sh/ch
111 = 7 = k/g
000 = 0 = s/z
The events with numbers and cards are the ones in which the memory experts can achieve great results by using memory systems. But four of the ten events in a memory championship are designed to be more of a test of 'natural' memory, and don't lend themselves so easily to tricks and techniques. But there are always tips on how to improve your score:
Random words: This can also be done using journeys, and creating a mental image from each word. For concrete nouns, this is easy, but for verbs or abstract concepts it takes more of a stretch of the imagination. Alternatively, turn the words into a kind of nonsense story, adding other words in between, but mentally stressing the words to be memorised. The important thing is to get them in sequence.
Names and faces: Some people like to try to create a mental image from the name of the person (easy if they're called Green or Shoemaker, less so if they have a meaningless or foreign name) and mentally associate that with the image of the person. Remember that in this event you don't have to remember the people in sequence, so you can pick and choose the ones who look the most memorable.
Abstract images: Probably the best way to go about this is to imagine what the shapes remind you of, and create a scene featuring these five objects, people, or whatever. Some people like to use a journey for this as well.
Historic dates: This can be done as a combination of techniques and ad hoc image-creation. Use number-images to create a picture from the year, and associate that with the description of the event.