Both the linking and the loci systems allow you to memorize anything that can be represented as, or reduced to, a list. Unlike those two, the peg system allows you to work with digits, so you can use it to remember reference numbers, hotel rooms, phone numbers and PIN numbers. It still is generally used in tandem with the linking system, and provides you with a way of connecting digits to each other or to words, names or other information. And, unlike the use of the markers in the loci mnemonic, it allows for a much more organic way of linking items on a list to their position on it.
For now, let us put aside the imaginary journeys of the loci system and return to our original thoughts about the simple use of linking to make one given piece of information effortlessly yield a second which we wish to know. We can incorporate the peg system into our palaces and travels later.
Here’s the premise: numbers are not words, and therefore cannot be visually linked. However, if each number could be represented by a word, you would be able to link away quite happily. Here, then, is one very simple way of turning the numbers 1 to 10 into words, by choosing words that rhyme with the numbers: 1 – Bun 2 – Shoe 3 – Tree 4 – Door 5 – Hive 6 – Sticks 7 – Heaven 8 – Gate 9 – Line 10 – Hen
Easy. So, if you wanted to remember the first ten words on our list from before so that if asked you could call out the word that comes at a given number, you would now link each word to its number rather than to the next word on the list. The first word on the list was telephone, so this would link to bun: an image, perhaps, of an iced bun being used as a phone, with currants arranged to look like a keypad on the front. And so on. If someone asked you for the word at position number one, you would think bun and immediately see a telephone.
This is a simple method, but it has real limitations. Rhyming gets more difficult, for example, once you get into the teens. A way of getting around this, if you like this system, is to repeat the same objects in each group of ten (so 2, 12, 22, 32, 42 etc. are all shoes), but let each group of ten dramatically affect the object in some distinct way. For example, all the objects when repeated as numbers 11 to 20 are to be seen as on fire; 21 to 30 are all freezing cold; 31 to 40 are all bright blue; and so on.
Personally I am not a fan of this system, because of such complications and other limitations. I shall teach you instead my preferred system. It requires a little more groundwork but will prove ultimately much more useful. It allows you to remember longer strings of numbers (such as, say, a phone number), which the previous peg system would be hard pushed to do.
We are going to begin by turning the digits from 0 to 9 into common consonants. The choice of letters will be dictated only by which consonant we can connect most easily with that number. And occasionally we give ourselves a useful alternative. The following is the list I use, and I shall explain each one:
Read through that list a few times and check that it makes sense for you. Then cover the page and see if you can remember them all. Once you have them, please carry on.
Now, let’s imagine you have to remember a new PIN number: 1743. (If that is indeed your PIN number, please don’t hesitate to be hugely impressed and immediately call the news.) You can represent those digits as LTRM. Now, you need only turn those four letters into a word or phrase to remember the number. Essentially you add vowel sounds to see what you get. I would think of ‘Light Room’, or ‘Le Tram’. As soon as you have one, link it to the idea of getting money out of the cash machine, and you’re done. For example, for ‘Light Room’, you might imagine a cash machine in a room with white walls and lots of lights, or for ‘Le Tram’, getting out of a tram in France to grab some euros. Now you have that image, you don’t need to worry about remembering the number. Just let the image of the cash machine trigger the picture of the tram and decode it. When adding letters to make a memorable word or words, just be careful not to use any other letters that are already used in the system. It’s best to stick to vowels, ‘h’s and ‘y’s.
Recently I went through the process of changing banks and had to remember several new PIN numbers for the new bank. First I turned each number into a word or two, as above. To continue with the 1743 example, for my business current account I would have imagined myself wearing a very nice business suit as I stepped off that French tram. The picture for my personal current account, on the other hand, would have involved me in my normal clothes.
By now you’ll have realized that if any of this sounds ridiculous, that really is the point. By spending a few seconds fixing these odd images in your head you are working in tandem with the way our brains make connections, as opposed to the supposedly more ‘sensible’ (and less effective) ways in which we are normally expected to try to remember information.
Here’s another example. While filming in Las Vegas a while back for Messiah, we stayed in one of the emphatically grotesque hotels that line the strip. On the first night of our arrival, while saying our exhausted goodnights after a long and vile journey, we arranged to meet in the morning at the quite unholy hour of six. As I left I realized that before I made that meeting in the morning, I would first need to collect something from Coops (my PA), who was in one room, and take it to Sarah-Jane’s room, where she was to endure the harrowing and sickening process of applying my make-up for the show. Of course, the hotel in question had some thirty floors, and three thousand or so rooms, so the two room numbers that were shouted at me by Coops and Sarah-Jane as I headed for the lift were each four digits long. I had neither pen nor paper, and I really had to remember what they were. I couldn’t risk walking around the floors of that place at half past five with no sense of a destination. Those of you familiar with these hotels will know how nightmarish they are: not only are the corridors labyrinthine and simply endless, but any attempt to return to the hotel reception requires a fifteen-minute walk through the blaring, screaming slot-
machines and gaudy découpage of the ground floor. As it turned out, I returned to my room that night to find that I didn’t have my key. Barely able to see or walk, I have never hated the world more than when I took the lift twenty-seven floors back down and made my way back through the sensory assault that is the Flamingo casino to the front desk, let alone when I was then told that I needed my passport to be issued a new key (my passport was already locked safely in my room). I don’t know what happened after that. I may have slept in the lobby; I may have killed a woman.
But I am straying from the point. Two room numbers were shouted at me, I had no writing tools, and I was seemingly in no state to remember what I was hearing. So I turned the numbers into letters, and the letters into words, and then attached that to the person whose room it was. Coops was 2037 (I can still remember it) – NSMT. I remembered ‘Nose Mat’, and imagined Coops welcoming me into his room with a tiny bristly doormat under his nose, to catch any detritus from his nostrils. Sarah-Jane’s was 1530 – LVMS, or ‘Live Mouse’. I imagined her applying my make-up with a squeaking rodent. I could then go to sleep for the few remaining hours left to me in the knowledge that I would easily conjure up these pictures in the morning as I headed for the lift. They stick very easily in the mind, precisely because they are vivid and unusual. You might want to prove this to yourself by running again through those twenty words you have in your head from when you learned the linking system. See if you can still do it. Remember that at no point have you even tried to learn these words, apart from the very first time, when you were not supposed to succeed.
There is another way of looking at the peg system. Let us return to our list and imagine we wish to learn which word comes at each number. That way, instead of just reciting the list, you could have your by now quite fascinated friend call out any number and you would be able to tell him the corresponding word. Similarly, you might need to attach numbers, dates or scores to names or places – the same system applies. Well, we’re now able to use the peg letters ‘s’, ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘m’ and so on to form word-images for the numbers in a way that will allow us to move into double digits with ease. Let’s take our letters for 0 to 9 and add a few vowels or soft consonants to turn them into words. These are the words I use:
0 – z/s : zoo 5 – f/v : hive 1 – l : ale 6 – b/p : bee 2 – n : hen 7 – T : tea 3 – m : ham 8 – ch/sh/j : shoe 4 – r : whore 9 – g : goo
Now, as we get into double digits, we combine the letters in the way you already know, and form more words. Here is my list from 10 to 52, which means I can show you how to use the system in conjunction with a deck of cards. Notice that 18, ‘ledge’, has turned the ‘ch’ into a ‘j’ sound because it’s the most similar. I could have used the word ‘latch’, but a ledge is rather easier to visualize than a latch, and simpler to use in conjunction with other images.
10 – l, z/s : lice 20 – n, z/s : nose 11 – l, l : lily 21 – n, l : nail 12 – l, n : line 22 – n, n : nanny 13 – l, m : lime 23 – n, m : gnome 14 – l, r : lorry 24 – n, r : Nero 15 – l, f/v : laugh 25 – n, f/v : knife 16 – l, b/p : lip 26 – n, b/p : nob
17 – l, t : light 27 – n, t : knight 18 – l, ch/sh/j : ledge 28 – n, ch/sh/j : notch 19 – l, g : leg 29 – n, g : nag 30 – m, z/s : moss 42 – r, n : rain 31 – m, l : mail 43 – r, m : ram 32 – m, n : money 44 – r, r : roar 33 – m, m : mum 45 – r, f/v : rave 34 – m, r : merry 46 – r, b/p : rub 35 – m, f/v : muff 47 – r, t : root 36 – m, b/p : map 48 – r, ch/sh/j : retch 37 – m, t : mat 49 – r, g : rag 38 – m, ch/sh/j : match 50 – f/v, z/s : fuse 39 – m, g : mag 51 – f/v, l : fall 40 – r, z/s : rose 52 – f/v, n : fan 41 – r, l : rail
Obviously each group of ten will start with the same sound, which makes things a little quicker to learn: all of the twenties, for example, begin with the ‘n’ sound. You will find that one or two better alternatives suggest themselves to you in place of the ones I suggest here, in which case by all means change them. For example, my word for 44 is actually not ‘roar’, as I’ve given it here, but ‘Rory’, after the soundman in our film crew. So change them for whatever works for you, but be careful not to add ‘fill- in’ letters which stand for other numbers, otherwise you’ll get into trouble. And do make sure that the pictures are easy to visualize.
So here is a new list of random words, and this time I’ll ask you to link each with its number. Begin with the first ten, first working out what each number translates into. Feel free to refer back to the previous pages, but see how many you can work out or remember on your own. After you’ve done this with ten, try the next ten. For example, when you read ‘1’, you think ‘l = ale’; then connect ‘ale’ to the word in position number one, in this case, ‘flower’. Here you can perhaps imagine a flower stuck in a pint of beer instead of a vase. Take that mental snapshot, attach any appropriate feelings to the picture if you can, then move on.
1 : flower 2 : pants 3 : laptop 4 : parrot 5 : whale 6 : nipple 7 : stadium 8 : Tony Blair 9 : tissue 10 : wedding 11 : lavatory 12 : clipboard 13 : thumb
14 : buzzer 15 : shell 16 : wallet 17 : magnet 18 : thread 19 : monitor 20 : wheelchair
When you’ve done it, tell yourself a number, and let it all unravel. Turn the number into a peg word, then see what it connects with. Have a friend help you with this, calling out random numbers and ticking them off as you go, until you really get the hang of it. Pay attention to those you get wrong, as more often than not you’ll notice that you didn’t take that second to really cement a clear, vivid and unusual image in your head.