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Double Digit Acrostics

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An earlier article is about acrostics and how a sentence can be turned into a string of digits by treating each word as a number. This article is about treating each word as a 2 digit number; and about other applications of this system of over 100 words. If words generally mean 2 digits each then shorter sentences can express quite long numbers.

Note: If a sentence uses a person's name then treat each word of the name as a single digit. Eg. Paul begins with P; in hte 0-9 article, P means the digit 5. Another example: Ch means 1 in the 0-9 article. So, Charles equals 1 because it begins: CH.

Here is a list of words where they indicate markers through a dictionary. It starts with 'A' and ends with 'Z'. If I make an acrostic using a word that occurs between the 'A' and the second marker ['Acorn'] then assume that the word represents the two digits '01'. Eg. 'About', 'Achieve', 'Abysmal'. If you can not think of a dictionary word to represent '01' then use a person name to represent the 0 and the 1. Eg. Brian Lara is B=0, L=1.

As an extra tool, you can use the first letters of a place name to mean a 1 digit number. Eg. Brighton begins with B. So it means 0 according to the 0-9 article.

A related way of memorising numbers in sequence is to use a loci [peg] system such as the BLOKES system; but each of the words from this list below would have an image that you could imagine at each location. So, running through the list of places, you would recall each icon image in sequence and then interpret it as a two digit number.

I decided upon some colour fill rules for those icons so that the colour it is filled in with is a further instruction. [Revisit the Colours article to revise how a colour can mean a digit]. Colour fill 8 is a light grey colour. It indicates that you should just use the first digit of what would usually be a 2 digit number. Colour fill 9 is a red colour. It indicates that you should just use the second digit of what would usually be a 2 digit number. Eg. A red Acorn would not mean 02 but just mean the second digit: 2.

The list of double digit words [Note: 00 occurs at the end, some double digits are allowed more than one marker word (they appear towards the end of the list a second time)]:


Icon 01: A

Icon 02: Acorn

Icon 03: Alarm

Icon 04: Anchor

Icon 05: Aqua

Icon 06: Astronomy

Icon 07: Ball

Icon 08: Bead

Icon 09: Biblio

Icon 10: Boat

Icon 11: Brew

Icon 12: Bush

Icon 13: Cannon

Icon 14: Cell

Icon 15: Chime

Icon 16: Claw

Icon 17: Column

Icon 18: Cone

Icon 19: Container

Icon 20: Cot

Icon 21: Cup

Icon 22: Deck

Icon 23: Departure

Icon 24: Dike

Icon 25: Distant

Icon 26: Draw

Icon 27: Eclipse

Icon 28: Engine

Icon 29: Ewe

Icon 30: Factory

Icon 31: Ferry

Icon 32: Flask

Icon 33: Forest

Icon 34: Fry

Icon 35: Gear

Icon 36: Glove

Icon 37: Graph

Icon 38: Gyrate

Icon 39: Heat

Icon 40: Home

Icon 41: Hypo

Icon 42: Inaudible

Icon 43: Inform

Icon 44: Inventory

Icon 45: Juggle

Icon 46: Knot

Icon 47: Leak

Icon 48: Light

Icon 49: Lock

Icon 50: Lynx

Icon 51: Mare

Icon 52: Memory

Icon 53: Missile

Icon 54: Mouse

Icon 55: Needle

Icon 56: Normal

Icon 57: Opposite

Icon 58: Over

Icon 59: Palm

Icon 60: Paste

Icon 61: Perfect

Icon 62: Pine

Icon 63: Plume

Icon 64: Post

Icon 65: Present

Icon 66: Project

Icon 67: Pulse

Icon 68: Quarter

Icon 69: Rapier

Icon 70: Recorder

Icon 71: Remedy

Icon 72: Rest

Icon 73: Ring

Icon 74: Row

Icon 75: Safe

Icon 76: Sausage

Icon 77: Screw

Icon 78: Semi

Icon 79: Settee

Icon 80: Shoe

Icon 81: Siren

Icon 82: Smell

Icon 83: Sombrero

Icon 84: Spiral

Icon 85: Stamp

Icon 86: Sting

Icon 87: Strum

Icon 88: Sum

Icon 89: Swing

Icon 90: Tambourine

Icon 91: Tent

Icon 92: Thumb

Icon 93: Top

Icon 94: Trap

Icon 95: Trough

Icon 96: Udder

Icon 97: Understand

Icon 98: Vapour

Icon 99: Vice

Icon 44 also: Walk - Weigh

Icon 46 also: Weigh - Wig

Icon 82 also: Wig - Worm


Icon 00: Worm - Z words


If you are not memorising each icon along a loci list then you can write sentences and constrain your writing to force each two digits of a number to fit into a sentence. I stated some ways to express a single digit already. Another idea is to use the following words as a way to indicate "interpret the next word as a single digit": 'Is', 'That', 'The' and 'Then'. Eg. "The sun was shining bright today" has its 'The' not interpreted itself as a number; instead, the next word ('Sun') is interpreted as a single digit [rather than as 2 digits] where 'S' is equal to 6 [see the 0-9 article]. 'Was' occurs in the list in the range 'Walk-Weigh' and so it means 44. 'Shining' occurs in the list in the range 'Settee-Shoe' and so it means 79. 'Bright' occurs in the list in the range 'Brew-Bush' and so it means 11. By similar logic, 'Today' means 92 [because it comes at or after 'Thumb' in the table]. So the number in the sentence is 644791192 .

Note: An exception would occur if a sentence uses '... is that...': "Is" means interpret the next word as a single digit; so 'That' [despite also usually triggering the special rule] is just interpreted as Th=3.


Colour Fill Rules

You could use the same list of icons as spelling prompts rather than interpreting them as digits. Eg. What if you want to memorise the sentence:

The sun was shining bright today

If you are memorising the icons along a loci list then you can have colour fill rules:

Fill with 0-9 colour article colour:

0 [Black] = the word being memorised uses the same first two letters as the icon. Eg. the image of the 'Swing' icon can also mean the word 'Swim' or 'Swat'.

1 [orange] = Increment the second letter of the icon word: increase it by 1 letter. Eg. 'Acorn' would increment the 'C' to 'D' so that it is a prompt for a word that begins 'AD...'.

2 [Deep yellow] = Increment the second letter of the icon word: increase it by 2 letters. Eg. 'Acorn' would increment the 'C' to 'E' so that it is a prompt for a word that begins 'AE...'.

Colours 3 to 8 are also increments of the second letter. Eg. Colour fill 8 [light grey] means that the 'Acorn' represents 'AK....'.

There are typically better ways to represent spelling prompts but I want to use this system for the chest logo drawings of the AA-ZZ Heroes article: the heroes are very visual and so are coloured icons. I want to store historic events: one represented by each chest logo of several of the heroes. So the hero representing 'AA' would have a coloured chest emblem that prompts an event from history which startes with the same letters as the chest emblem represents.

I then want hero AB's chest to be a hint at the year of the historic event that AA represents. Read further down this article to see how years can be represented.

Armed with all this knowledge, let's tackle:

The sun was shining bright today

The: range 'Tent-Thumb' needs a tent icon. The TH is 3 increments beyond 'TE'. So colour the tent using colour 3: the green from the 0-9 colour article.

Sun: range 'Sum-Swing' needs a Sum icon. The 'SU' is fine. So colour fill the Sum icon with the colour black.

Was: range 'Walk-Weigh': Walk icon filled in black to represent "WA...".

Shining: range 'Settee-Shoe'. Increment the SE to SH by using colour fill 3 on the setteee icon: green.

Bright: range 'Brew-Bush'. Colour fill black the bush icon.

Today: range 'Thumb-Top'. TH needs 7 increments to reach 'TO'. So colour fill the Thumb icon with colour 7: Pink.


Coloured Icons for Years

An icon can represent two digits. Eg. Thumb icon represents 91. The colours article represents 27 colours as representing numbers 0 to 26; I can apply that to mean centuries.

So if the thumb is coloured colour 19 then it means 1991. Colour 19 is a pinkish shade of red [see the Colours article]. So the thumb icon is imagined filled in with that colour. If I want a hero emblem to mean 1991 then that coloured thumb emblem would be on that character's chest [or maybe elsewhere].

Before the first century, how would I represent 110 BC? I would assume that I can remember rote that the time is before 1AD. So I would just want an emblem that means 110 or 110. So colour fill 1 would be used on icon 10: an orange Boat icon.

Colour 21 can mean "Thousands of Years BC";

Colour 22 can mean "Thousands of Years Ago";

Colour 23 can mean "Millions of Years Ago";

Colour 24 can mean "Billions of Years Ago";

Colour 25 can mean "Thousands of Years Ago [but expect a decimal point. Eg. 47 is treated as 4.7]";

Colour 26 can mean "Millions of Years Ago" [but expect a decimal point.;

Colour 27 can mean "Billions of Years Ago" [but expect a decimal point.;


Coloured Icons as Name Prompts

Later in this course is a History 100 article where each of the 100 cartoon people represents a period in history. Eg. A 50 year period. If a King began his reign during that time then the History 100 person could be inmagined in a scene with an object that represents the person. Maybe you could find an image of an actor playing Skakespeare's Richard III and then imagine the actor next to the History 100 cartoon person.

Another way to represent Richard is to use the Double Digits Acrostics icon that the sorted spelling of 'Richard' would belong with: range 'Rest - Ring'. My icon image for that range is a ring icon. So I can imagine the History 100 person admiring a ring. The 'I' of 'RIchard' is 4 characters more than the 'E' of 'RE'; so I would colour fill the ring with colour 4: the magenta from the Colours article.

I would need to practise the recall because I am just memorising "RI" really; and my rote memory needs to interpret that as Richard III.

Once I have Richard III in mind, maybe I have a memorised acrostic that contains his year of birth, year of ascending to the throne, and year of death. Sometimes, key events from a person's life can be part of the verse. I will try to make a verse for Richard III:

The years I need to encrypt are 1452, 1483 (ascends to throne) and 1485 (died). The 14 needs to occur just once because the year of death is also in that century. [if he died in 1501 then memorising an 01 would imply that the century rolled over from 14 hundreds to 1500s]. 14 52 83 85 is enough to represent 1452, 1482 and 1485.

Ranges I might use are:

14: Cell - Chime

52: Memory - Missile

83: Sombrero - Spiral

85: Stamp - Sting

(but I can force a one digit and a one digit as an alternative way to make verse represent two digits.)

It is generally said that his death marks the end of the Middle Ages. Maybe the word 'Middle' could be used in the verse?...

Richard III - Changing Middle Span Stilled.

['Changing' is in 14 range, 'Middle' is in 52 range, 'Span' is in 83, 'Stilled' is in 85]

So, in a very stilted way, the verse mentions the Middle Ages ending with his death. If any of those numbers had been 44, 46, 82 or 00 then I would have had an extra word range available: see the entries near the end of the table that come after 99.

The magenta ring gives me a broad idea of when Richard III wasmarked out in history; and the accompanying verse gives me some year statistics.

I anticipate further uses of the 100+ icons.