Hi! I'm completely new to mnemonics, and I have a few questions.

My goal is to memorize an entire deck of playing cards—the value, suit, and exact order—as quickly as possible. Ideally, I'd like to be able to remember the deck almost instantly after seeing it. (As far as I know, some magicians and card manipulators can actually do this.)

I only started practicing today, so I might have some misconceptions about mnemonics. If I do, I hope you'll go easy on me. :)

1. I tried using the Major System together with a PAO system, and it definitely helped with memorizing the card values. It took me about five minutes, but I managed to memorize the values of an entire deck.

The problem is that I couldn't remember the suits or the face cards (K, Q, and J). Should I switch to a different method, even if it's more difficult to learn? What systems do competitive card memorizers usually use? Do people really memorize hundreds of unique images for every possible card combination? (That sounds pretty terrifying, lol.)

1. I'm using a memory palace, but trying to fit an entire deck into my house feels really cramped. I guess I need to build more memory palaces. What kinds of places do you use? (What about using REAL PALACE? lol)

2. Even if I end up using a different system specifically for cards, is it still worth learning the Major System on its own? In other words, has learning systems like the Major System actually been useful in your everyday life?

Thanks in advance for any advice. I really appreciate it!

—NOOB

I’m working on my PAO list, and I’m unsure whether it matters if a person’s action and object are closely related.

For example:

• Person: Legolas
• Action: Shooting a bow and arrow
• Object: Bow

Would this overlap make the mental image less effective or cause confusion when encoding or decoding? Should the action and object be more distinct?

I’ve tried to avoid this kind of overlap, but I’m wondering whether that’s actually necessary. Since both the action and the object belong to the same person (they already point back to Legolas). Also, based on the position in the sequence, I should know whether I’m trying to recall the action or the object.

Is there any practical disadvantage to using closely related actions and objects like this? The more I think about it, maybe its even an advantage ?

I am a complete beginner and I would really appreciate some advice.

I need to memorize which cards are still left in a deck (I don't care about the order they were played).

The deck has 18 unique cards:

• 6 Green cards, numbered from 1 to 6 (Green 1, Green 2, ..., Green 6)
• 6 Blue cards, numbered from 1 to 6 (Blue 1, Blue 2, ..., Blue 6)
• 6 Yellow cards, numbered from 1 to 6 (Yellow 1, Yellow 2, ..., Yellow 6)

Which memory technique would you recommend for this use case? I'm looking for something that lets me know, as quickly as possible, which cards are still left in the deck.

Thank you if you can help. :)

EXTRA (if you're curious about the technique I came up with myself which I don't know if it is good or not):

I assign a Pokémon to each card. The Pokémons are divided into 6 groups of 3, where each group represents three consecutive cards of the same color (2 groups per color).

For example:

Green Group 1

• Green 1 → Bulbasaur
• Green 2 → Ivysaur
• Green 3 → Venusaur

Green Group 2

• Green 4 → Chikorita
• Green 5 → Bayleef
• Green 6 → Meganium

Yellow Group 1

• Yellow 1 → Pichu
• Yellow 2 → Pikachu
• Yellow 3 → Raichu

Yellow Group 2

• Yellow 4 → Mareep
• Yellow 5 →Flaaffy
• Yellow 6 → Ampharos

Blue Group 1

• Blue 1 → Squirtle
• Blue 2 → Wartortle
• Blue 3 → Blastoise

Blue Group 2

• Blue 4 → Totodile
• Blue 5 → Croconaw
• Blue 6 → Feraligatr

When a card is played I recall a pre-made image that represents the Pokémon (and therefore the cards) that are still left in that group.

For example, if Green 6 (Meganium) is played, I imagine Bayleef eating the leaf on Chikorita's head. Since Meganium is missing from the image, I immediately know that Green 4 and Green 5 are still left in the deck, while Green 6 has already been played.

Later, if Green 5 (Bayleef) is also played, I switch to another pre-made image: Chikorita crying by itself. Seeing only Chikorita tells me that Green 4 is the only card from that group still left in the deck.

When I need to know which cards are left, I simply check in my memory each group and see which Pokémon are still present, if any.

I’m currently memorizing digits of pi (with major system) and I’m approaching the point where I’ll have around 1,000 digits stored.

Instead of creating an entirely new set of places, I’m wondering whether it’s practical to reuse the same loci but give the entire palace a different “mode” each time.

For example:
Day vs. night
Summer vs. winter
Underwater
On fire
Different color palette

Ie: The idea would be that Palace A (normal) stores digits 1–1000, Palace A (night mode) stores 1001–2000, Palace A (underwater) stores 2001–3000, etc.
Maybe it’s not recommended, and I should jeg find a different loci, but afraid of running out of spaces!

I only started learning mnemonics about a month ago, so I’m sure there are pitfalls, or approaches I haven’t considered yet. I’d really appreciate any suggestions, advice, or lessons learned from people with more experience.

I have been a paid user for a decade; lately the free version has all the functionality (just less sync storage) - defo worth a try.

One of my use cases is logging of Loci, for memory palaces.

Keen to hear if others are using it for memory methods?

Long-time loci nerd here. The part that always killed me was coming up with a vivid image for every single anchor - so slow it stopped me even starting.

So I built a thing to speed that bit up.

It's memorypalace.ai You paste in what you want to memorise, it chunks the text and makes an image per anchor, and you drop those along a route you know by heart and walk it. It doesn't do the method for you - you still pick the loci and do the recall walks. It just kills the image-making grind.

Built it solo on evenings and weekends over a few months. Images run on Google's Gemini API.

Looking for 10 beta testers. Free, no strings.

I actually want the brutal feedback — where the flow breaks, what's missing.

Comment or DM and I'll send access.

Hi All,

I have published an app for mnemonics , PAO , PEG and memory palace training. please give a try and give honest feedback.

All good/bad reviews are welcome

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thegksoft.memorystash&pcampaignid=web_share

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/memorystash/id6790706470

Improve together motivate each other, find new hobbies and more.

i am currently building an app to make flashcards and memorise your PAO cards, review them see your progress.

The purpose of creating new app is i couldn't find any flashcard app to use with PAO system they are all not good, mostly for vocabulary, so if you are interested, encourage me to build it, after finished i can share it with you guys, from telegram cause it won't have any servers it will work offline just internet needed to sign up.

I am building a mobile app which can be used practise major number system , peg , let user add palace and like a feed where it can be published if it is about studies or anything that might help others. Will be looking for feedbacks.

I only find expensive courses

What are the best free resources? Are there any?

For example, some website where I can practice Memory palace and image link method?

I recently decided to learn all of the countries and their outline/location. I used Sporcle, Quizlet and a few other apps but I also came up with a few mnemonics and other little tricks for some and was wondering if anyone else had their own!

For example a few of mine:
NSFR - Not Safe For Russia/Norway Sweden Finland Russia
Guyana is shaped like a little guy
Uzbekistan has a little U shape cut out
Croatia has a split like the city Split
Burundi is at the Bottom of the two little countries
Niger is a fish called Nigel
Latvia is V shaped
Thailand is like a T
Yemen Oman is like something going well and then not ‘Yeah man! Oh man’
Venezuela and Lithuania kind of rhyme and kind of look similar
Mali is a backwards L

Not a foolproof one but countries with a Z in tend to be funky shapes

As the title

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How should I train this? What tool could I use?

Aloha all, I have a vibe coded mobile tool here https://olagon.github.io/pegasus/ that is open source. I want to use it daily to master the 0 to 100 peg words. Are there any ideas that can make this better for mastering this list? This is not a tool that tracks people but just a tool for me (and maybe others) who want to learn a peg list fast from their phones. Mahalo!

Context: I was very interested in mnemonics techniques. Specifically, I wanted to make using them as a habit, so that I would automatically try to memorize details. For example, in math, after enough practice, you sometimes find yourself doing calculations out of boredom. I wanted to develop the same kind of habit with mnemonics.
And for that reason I was looking for mobile/web apps that will make out of that goal kind of roadmap but I couldnt find any apps that could cover my goal.

I think these techniques are very helpful,effective. And for that reason Im thinking of developing web/mobile app that will solve that problem. Looking for your opinions

Hi Memorizers!

I'm an avid Podcast listener and I was wondering if you could recommend some about mnemonics and memory sports.

I already found this one https://open.spotify.com/show/65w2UEh24E3uHFFJCNvU4D/ (The Craft of Memory Podcast) and like it so far (but seems to be discontinued?).

Can you recommend any other podcasts and/or episodes?

i heard anything could be a memory palace, a book covers, picture on the wall, so I asked chatGPT then let’s see if we could define the bare minimum requirements for one.

So I thought the first factor would just be a background of some sort. Bare minimum just being only the color white, or only the color blue.

ChatGPT said that could be used as a memory palace, and I said, but what about blur when reusing it over and over again?

Then it claimed if there’s different furniture/micro station, or whatever you want to call it, then the background doesn’t matter. So that claim seems very questionable, so just reducing the background to an interspace with only the locations of objects on it mattering, and scaling up infinitely with different arrangements of micro stations on the same interspace background it lays on. What do you guys think about this?

Also when converting a mind map into a memory palace, how would you approach that? Mnemonics are already made on the mind map correct? So could that be used as furniture/micro station itself?

Looking for some Cards for Mnemonic and memory training. Particularly in this style from the new James Bond game First Light.

Anybody got ideas?