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Since I have ways to memorise letters of the alphabet (such as letter pair images), I can represent numbered choices as letters; and then memorise the letters in order to memorise the choices.

E.g. The article about Cards mentioned a system where 5 choices and 5 choices can be represented as a single letter.

Below are three systems where a letter can mean a sequence of choices. Where you see the list that consists of 1s and 2s, you can think of them as a pair of choices such as Yes/No or Up/Down or Black/Red.



Acrostic Letter Four Pairs of Choices

O 1111

I 1112

A 1121

E 1122

M 1211

N 1212

S 1221

C 1222

T 2111

R 2112

B 2121

L 2122

H 2211

G 2212

D 2221

P 2222

Acrostic F / G Switch to Use Last Digit

Acrostic TH Switch to Use Last 2 Digits

Acrostic V Switch to Use Last 3 Digits














Three Lots of Three Choices

O 111

I 112

K 113

A 121

E 122

F 123

G 131

H 132

B 133

M 211

N 212

L 213

S 221

C 222

D 223

P 231

Q 232

R 233

J 311

T 312

U 313

V 321

W 322

X 323

Y 331

Z 332

SH 333



Letter One In Five (Left) One In Five (Right)
O 1 1
I 1 2
K 1 3
U 1 4
W 1 5
A 2 1
E 2 2
D 2 3
V 2 4
B 2 5
P 3 1
H 3 2
B 3 3
Y 3 4
N 3 5
S 4 1
C 4 2
T 4 3
F 4 4
L 4 5
CH 5 1
SH 5 2
R 5 3
M 5 4
J 5 5

The choice of letters has a little design to it:

If the letter "A" means 1121 then I like the idea that "A" in another system list means "21" [the tail part of 1121]; but I was limited in how often I could do that sort of association.

Since the top list is only 16 rows, I thought that I would use letters that are good for acrostic words. E.g. "Z" and "X" are not in the list because not many words start with those letters, normally. So I could make a phrase acrostic that represents a sequence of Yes/No choices.

I thought that the end of the list of Yes/No choices might not neatly be four Y/N choices; so I let other acrostic spellings instruct "The next acrostic word needs to use the final 3 digits", etc. . So "Tom Climbs Very Slowly" is TCVS where the V is not representing digits but telling me how to treat the "S" that comes immediately after it. T = 2111, C = 1222, then use the last three ddigits of S number 1221: use the 221.


Card tricks are a nice way to demonstrate these ideas. E.g. With the three digit system, memorsing the letter pair for "OK" would be like memorising 111 113 . If you decided beforehand that 1 is an Ace, 2 is a King and 3 is "anything else" then you could memorise a pack quite quickly and, if good at working backwards, deal the cards and state each King and Ace before displaying them.

I was thinking about these systems this week because I was thinking about memorising if a number is divisible by 7 or divisible by 11 or divisible by 13; and I was wondering if I could imagine a Y/N Y/N Y/N answer to that question as a three digit number cosnsisting of 1s and 2s.

But then I studied again how easy it is to work out if a number is divisible by 7, 11 or 13; and I gave up on the idea.