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 the 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 [before] the second marker ['Acupuncture'] 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 if I want to store the first two letters of a word:
O, I, A, E, U, N, R, S, C, T, L, H can all use their fill colours from the Colours article. So, even if an icon is "Acupuncture", we can still use the Acupuncture pin icon to prompt "AR" of "arrangement" by filling the pin with the R colour: red.
If the second letter is none of those choices then fill with pink.
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If the first letter needs to increment by 1 then there is a colour fill to indicate that: brown (but you only use brown if one of the shortlist of colours is not available). E.g. "Bad" occurs between "Astronomy" and "Ball" in the icons list. So I can use the Astronomy icon (telescope outline image) and a colour fill that means that we have incremented a letter:
The "BA" of "Bad" would only use a colour fill of brown if the 2nd letter is not in the shortlist of colour fills. The telescope icon does not need to be filled with brown because the "A" of "BAd" has a fill colour. Since "Astronomy" has "AS...", there can be no 2nd letter "A": after "S" in the alphabet, there is no "A"; so the "A" fill colour can only relate to the next icon: Ball.
Brown probably will not occur much since so many 2nd letters of dictionary words are the shortlist of letters of the small palette.
(Similarly, Pink probably will not occur much since so many 2nd letters of dictionary words are the shortlist of letters of the small palette.)
I do not plan to add any extra rules to that approach because it is a bit complicated as it is. For instance, in the 00-99 double digit acrostics, 99 is Well - the last word beginning with Z; so if I use brown to mean that the word prompt is not beginning with "W..." then X or Y or Z could be the implied first letter of the prompt; that is complicated.
I mentioned pink as the colour fill to use when the second letter of an icon word is none of the 12 letters I listed a few sentences ago. An example of that is the icon "Eye" where Y is the second letter. So if I needed to prompt "Eye" then the colour fill of the eye icon would need to be pink. ANother example could be the acupuncture pin icon and trying to prompt the word "Add": the second letter "D" is not in the list; so the pink is used to colour fill the acupuncture pin. This works because the history prompts are static and can be reviewed a lot.
Coloured Icons for Years
An icon can represent two digits. Eg. Thumb icon represents 91. The colours article represents 28 colours as representing numbers 0 to 27; 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 0110. So colour fill 1 would be used on icon 10: an orange Boat icon.
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 nth Century. E.g. Occurring after a 25, 03 means 3rd century; Occurring after a 25, 10 means 10th century.
Colour 26 can mean "Thousands of Years BC";
I am using rote memory to know if a decimal point occurs. So 3.4 million years ago and 34 million years ago would both be represented by a 23 and then a 34: 23 means millions of years ago; 34 means 34 million years ago or 3.4 million years ago if rotememory reminds me that a decimal point occurs.
Coloured Icons to Help Attach a Number to Number Mnemonics
A lot of the mnemonics in this course have a matching number. E.g. A particular cartoon woman can represent a pair of letters such as "MC" but she can also represent a three digit number. Her outfit and its colour are clues for deducing the three digit number: interpreting the colour as a number, interpreting the top as a digit and the bottom part of the outfit as a digit. A lot of the mnemonics do not easily imply the number that the visual image represents. So I have tried to use the rote learning of the icons as a way to assist the learning of other mnemonics:
So I put a pattern fill in the icons as a default fill detail; and that will make learning of patterns and their matching two digit number easier.
And I put those patterns into the outfit fill of the 10 People mnemonic images. So there should be reinforcement learning of the patterns.
Note: I made people 00 to 51 have hairstyles that match the article about hairstyles 00 to 51. So I am trying to make the learning of one set of images assist with the learning of another set of images.
The 100 icons images do not get used much; so I thought that I could largely dedicate them to making the learning of a mnemonic image's corresponding number easier. E.g. I have 100 floor icons and they each have a corresponding number; if I can imagine icon Boat (=10) appearing on floor number 10 then that helps me to remember the floor's matching number.
I could memorise a metric for each of the People images from 00 to 99: each person could have an icon item from the icons list. So Person 10 (Donald) can be imagined stood with the Boat image; and that is a reminder that Donald is person 10.
There is a system of 50 props numbered 00 to 49 which get used to build visual scenes that contain numbers as visual props. In order to learn their numbering, each prop such as a post box can have its equivalent two digit number icon imagined beside it.
There are 100 History People images. They occur as history people 00 to 99 but they also have a year range which they cover so that each narrator history person can be imagined talking about events within that time range. The ordinal positions of each history person from 00 to 99 could be learned quickly by imagining each history person next to an Icon from 00 to 99.
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 imagined in a scene with an object that represents the person. Maybe you could find an image of an actor playing Shakespeare'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 'person resting' icon. So I can imagine the History 100 person staring down at the icon person who is on the floor. The 'I' of 'RIchard' is colour fill orange; so I would colour fill the 'resting ground person' icon with colour 1 = Orange = 'I'.
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: Century - Chime
52: Memory - Missile
83: Sombrero - Speckled
85: Stamp - Sting
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.
The verse about Richard gives me some year statistics. Also see the article about the 100 narrator history people; that is another way to associate Richard with a period in history.
Hollow Icons
I have plain 'hollow' versions of the icons too so that I can colour fill them to mean either numbers or speliing prompts of prefixes:
Hollow Icon 00: Well - Z words
Double Digit Adjectives
I see further uses of the 100 icons. Eg. 100 adjectives where a single word describing a person or place implies two digits:
Note: The middle column is not adjectives but a reminder of the boundaries between spelling prompts: the same words as in the list you saw earlier in this article; the far right column contains the adjectives.
Note: Items 0 to 9 can be thought of as items 00 to 09.
| Digits | Boundary | Adjective | |
| 0 | Z [Well – Z words] | Young | |
| 1 | A | Abnormal | |
| 2 | Acupuncture | Affectionate, Aggressive | |
| 3 | Alarm | Amusing | |
| 4 | Anchor | Approachable | |
| 5 | Arc | Arty | |
| 6 | Astronomy | Awful | |
| 7 | Ball | Barmy | |
| 8 | Bead | Beautiful | |
| 9 | Biblio | Bitter | |
| 10 | Boat | Boring | |
| 11 | Brew | Brilliant | |
| 12 | Bush | Busy | |
| 13 | Cannon | Caring | |
| 14 | Century | Charming | |
| 15 | Chime | Chirpy | |
| 16 | Claw | Cold | |
| 17 | Column | Compassionate | |
| 18 | Cone | Confident | |
| 19 | Contest | Corporate | |
| 20 | Cot | Cracked | |
| 21 | Cup | Curious | |
| 22 | Deck | Defensive | |
| 23 | Depart | Dirty | |
| 24 | Dial | Distant | |
| 25 | Doctor | Dramatic | |
| 26 | Draw | Dreary | |
| 27 | Eclipse | Energetic | |
| 28 | Engine | Enthusiastic | |
| 29 | Eye | Fabulous | |
| 30 | Famous | Fashionable | |
| 31 | Feast | Fierce | |
| 32 | Flask | Flying | |
| 33 | Foal | Friendly | |
| 34 | Fry | Funny | |
| 35 | Gear | Gentle | |
| 36 | Glove | Graceful | |
| 37 | Graph | Grumpy | |
| 38 | Gyrate | Happy | |
| 39 | Heat | Helpful | |
| 40 | Home | Hungry | |
| 41 | Hypo | Ignorant | |
| 42 | Inaudible | Inflexible | |
| 43 | Inform | Insecure | |
| 44 | Inventory | Isolated | |
| 45 | Juggle | Jumpy | |
| 46 | Knot | Lazy | |
| 47 | Leak | Legendary | |
| 48 | Light | Likeable | |
| 49 | Lock | Loud, Loyal | |
| 50 | Lynx | Manic | |
| 51 | Mare | Mature | |
| 52 | Memory | Messy | |
| 53 | Missile | Moody | |
| 54 | Mouse | Naughty | |
| 55 | Needle | Nervous | |
| 56 | Normal | Nosy | |
| 57 | Opposite | Optimistic | |
| 58 | Over | Over-confident | |
| 59 | Palm | Pale | |
| 60 | Paste | Paused | |
| 61 | Perfect | Perfect | |
| 62 | Pine | Playful | |
| 63 | Plume | Popular | |
| 64 | Post | Powerful | |
| 65 | Present | Pretentious | |
| 66 | Project | Proud | |
| 67 | Pudding | Pushy | |
| 68 | Quarter | Quirky | |
| 69 | Rapier | Rare | |
| 70 | Recorder | Reliable | |
| 71 | Remedy | Resentful | |
| 72 | Rest | Restful | |
| 73 | Ring | Romantic | |
| 74 | Row | Rude | |
| 75 | Safe | Sage | |
| 76 | Sausage | Scary | |
| 77 | Screw | Secretive, Selfish | |
| 78 | Semi | Sensible, Sensitive, Serious | |
| 79 | Settee | Shabby | |
| 80 | Shoe | Silly | |
| 81 | Siren | Small | |
| 82 | Smoking | Sneaky | |
| 83 | Sombrero | Sociable, Sophisticated | |
| 84 | Speckled | Spooky | |
| 85 | Stamp | Steady | |
| 86 | Sting | Strong | |
| 87 | Strum | Stubborn | |
| 88 | Sum | Sweet | |
| 89 | Swing | Tactless | |
| 90 | Tambourine | Taxed | |
| 91 | Tent | Tested | |
| 92 | Thumb | Timid | |
| 93 | Top | Tough | |
| 94 | Trap | Tricky | |
| 95 | Trod | Truthful | |
| 96 | Udder | Unknown | |
| 97 | Understand | Underwhelming | |
| 98 | Vapour | Vicious | |
| 99 | Viral | Vivacious | |
An example of using the adjectives could be that 1 to 31 are days in a month and 41 to 52 are months January to December. So two adjectives could represent your friend's birthday. Eg. If Jack has 28 September as his birthday then use adjective 28 and adjective 49: Enthusiastic Loud Jack (even if Jack is not really like that).
What if an important treaty happened on that date? You could still use "Enthusiastic Loud.." to describe the treaty even though it is nonsense text: it might still be a lot more memorable than the direct calendar date itself.
A single adjective could imply a year (not the century though). Eg. If the London police force was founded in 1829 then the adjective for 29 could be used: "Fabulous police".
A nice way to learn the adjectives is to apply them to each of the people from the article about people 00 to 99. Boris is person 00. The 00 adjective is "Young". So I could learn "Young Boris" as a phrase. Then, when I need to use an adjective for 00, I could think of Boris and be prompted the word "Young"; and then use the adjective "Young".
(Another approach for dates is to have a visual image for each date from 1st January to 31st December. See the Ancient Greece article.)