Mnemonic games

Index
This section Index

Mnemonic index
Mnemonic and eidetic memory games

Puzzle
Logic games

Cards
Pyramid, Solitaire cards games

Math
Games for mind development

IQ test
Test your mind ability

Relax movies
Relax and meditation

Use Peg Words

There are several variations of this system, of increasing complexity, as longer and longer lists are needed. One of the simplest is:

Number Rhymes: For this method, you are linking pictures to a list of things to be remembered. An example of one rhyme scheme is:

1 - Bun
2 - Shoe

3 - Tree

4 - Door

5 - Hive

6 - Sticks

7 - Heaven

8 - Gate

9 - Line

10 - Hen

To use this method, you might imagine a list of the first ten presidents. Picture

George Washington eating a bun (with his wooden teeth) and thinking "one, bun, George."
John Adams putting on his shoes,
Thomas Jefferson sitting under a tree, and so on.

This method works extremely well for remembering ONE list for ONE test or quiz. However, if you have more than one list, this method is of little use for the second list, or the third and so on. It also gets much more complex if you have a list longer than ten items. For more information, including methods to use for longer lists, visit Mind Tools.

Try your own peg word list. Think of your own rhyming words as you do [after all "one" also rhymes with fun, gun, hun, done, pun, sun, etc.].

If you want to memorize the names of the 10 first presidents, here is the list: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and John Tyler.

Consider using this exercise to help you with a list that you actually need to memorize. Click here to type out your peg word list and be certain to include the word associations. For example, one = run = George Washington got the British on the run.

5. Use Stories or Rhymes

Invent a story for remembering a list of unrelated items, such as: Easter, saddle, fair, apples, pebbles. For example,

"Last Easter, I caught my horse, put on the

saddle, and rode to the

fair, where I bobbed for

apples and dug

pebbles out of my horse`s shoes."

Another familiar example of a rhyme:

Thirty days hath September

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one

Except for February, which has twenty-eight.

If you are not feeling rhythmic, consider using the perennial favorite, "Roses are red, violets are blue . . ." Click here to create and type a rhyme to help you remember facts, numbers, or formulae. If you like music, use a favorite tune to build a memorable rhyme.

6. Use the Roman Room

Similar to the journey method, you can use the Roman Room method by picturing a familiar room and associating the items on the list with items in the room.

Here are four final, simple techniques that can help you with learning and remembering.

Attend. Stay focused on the task. Multi-tasking while you are trying to learn will not enhance your memory. If you really need to learn something, then all those boring things you heard in school will really help.
Focus. Work in an environment that helps you concentrate on your task. If you work best in a quiet environment, like many of us, find a place where you are free from distractions and interruptions. Some people benefit from music or background noise. If you are on of those people, find such an environment by all means. If your mind starts to wander, bring yourself back to the task
Rehearse. Practice does make you remember better! Read the new material more than once. Review your outline; rehearse your memory aids and visual images; repeat the acronym or sentence you created as a memory aid.
Sleep. Many of us are sleep deprived. You will concentrate, analyze, learn, and remember better when you have adequate sleep.

A Final Note

You will find that different techniques will work best for different memory tasks. For many of us, rehearsal [repeating the number and perhaps writing it] will be an adequate tool for remembering telephone numbers. Generally, the benefits of using a more complex mnemonic technique increases with the complexity of the material you need to remember.

The Quick Tip list for this topic includes additional examples of mnemonic techniques to try.

Advanced uses combining the major system with peg systems

In the peg system, a set of words is pre-memorized, and to remember a structured list, a person associates the items he wants to remember with one of the prememorized pegwords. For example, you could prememorize the pegs GUN, SHOE, TREE, DOOR, HIVE,...(for the numbers 1,2,3,4,and 5 respectively) and to memorize a grocery list of milk, eggs ,butter, bread, and catsup, you would visualize a gun shooting a stream of milk, an egg wearing shoes, a tree with sticks of butter on it, a door made of bread, and bees flying out of a catsup bottle. For a more detailed explanation see Mnemonic peg system.

The major system is often used to generate pegs because other methods such as rhymes are severely limited in the number of pegwords that can be produced. In addition being used to simply generate pegs, the major system can also be used to convert numeric data into meaningful words that can further be associated with pegs to memorize more structured information such as charts and tables.

Mnemonic and Cards

In several of his books, Harry Lorayne describes a double peg-system that can be used to quickly memorize an entire deck of cards. One peglist is for the numbers 1 through 52, and the other is for the cards. The card pegs are constructed with the first letter of the peg coming from the suit name and the following sound from the card`s number (1 through 9, 0 for 10, and special rules for face cards) For example if the pegword for 7 is "cow" and the pegword for the 5 of hearts is "hell" one could picture a cow in hell to know that 5 of hearts is 7th in the deck.

Mnemonic and Periodic table

The periodic table provides an example of just how well-structured this memorized information can become.

Using the major system a peglist can be constructed for the numbers 1 through 118, and these pegs can be associated with the names of the elements (or with a pun on their symbols). If the pegword for 76 is "coach" then it is easy to remember that osmium`s atomic number is 76 by imagining Ozzy Osbourne as a coach. If your peg for 86 is fish, you could remember that radon`s atomic number is 86 by visualizing a radioactive fish. This can be expanded further by using the major system to make words out of the atomic mass. You could picture a disappointed fisherman looking at the glowing 3-eyed fish he just caught and yelling "NO!NO!NO!" about his "sad catch" to remember that radon has a mass of 222.0176 (no no no sad catch)

Project index