Jan 20 2025 Bitcoin Mnemonics

The Linking System

All mnemonics are based on some sort of linking system, the idea is to take the items you want to remember and create scenes and images that you can picture in your mind, this helps lock the information into long term memory. When thinking up these visualisations try to keep the following in mind:

1.  The picture should be vivid.

Try and see the picture clearly and in focus, imagine yourself stumbling upon the scene or witnessing the events in first person. Let yourself emotionally engage with it for a moment. If the picture is amusing find it funny. If it’s disgusting, actually find it repulsive. focus on how each image makes you feel. Is it funny? Disgusting? Dangerous? Actually take some time to feel that emotion.

2.  The elements of each picture should interact.

Picturing A and B stood next to each other won’t work. A could be made of B; or dancing with B; being inserted into B; or using b as some sort of implement.

3.  The picture should be unusual.

If you are linking ‘man’ and ‘cup’, for example, don't use an image that is ordinary. ‘a man drinking from a cup’ for example is too normal. The picture will be more memorable if the man is trying to drink from a giant cup, or is sucking the cup into his face, or if there is a tiny man in a cup trying to get out before the tea gets poured in. Try and be creative and bizarre as possible in order to make a lasting impression.

If the above is starting to make you feel nervous, its actually very straight forward and doesn't require much practice or creative genius. You will be surprised how quickly you can pick this up and how images will just be effortless conjured up to promptly land at a particular word or task you want to remember.

The following example was taken from Derren Brown's fascinating book Tricks of the Mind which first introduced me to these techniques. After reading the next section of this post you will be able to recall the following seemingly randomly words in perfect order and even in reverse. You will likely still be able to recall them weeks later.

1. Telephone
2. Sausage
3. Monkey
4. Button
5. Book
6. Cabbage
7. Glass
8. Mouse
9. Stomach
10. Cardboard
11. Ferry
12. Christmas
13. Athlete
14. Key
15. Wigwam
16. Baby
17. Kiwi
18. Bed
19. Paintbrush
20. Walnut

Before beginning try reading the above words and see how many you can remember, minimise the window and see how many you can type out or write down from memory. You might get half a dozen without any special techniques. Now take some time to read the following, remember to take note of how the images are making you feel and take your time, don't just skim read.

• Telephone/Sausage: Trying to dial an old-fashioned phone using a flaccid, uncooked sausage. It feels revolting and cold to the fingers, and is utterly impractical to work the dial. I can maybe get the dial around a little way, but then it just purrs back into place.
• Sausage/Monkey: Watching footage from a wildlife documentary of a monkey, in the jungle, cooking a sausage over a barbecue. These are rare monkeys, and this is the first time they have been filmed. Next to him he has a selection of dips.
• Monkey/Button: You no longer have to spend valuable time doing up your own shirt buttons. You now have a trained monkey to do such things. You stand there in your socks and he does up all the buttons with his clever simian fingers.
• Button/Book: It’s a book entirely about buttons, and in order to open it you have to unfasten a line of big colourful buttons down the side. Hugely impractical marketing gimmick. Makes opening it really irritating.
• Book/Cabbage: Opening up a book to have a quiet lunchtime read, only to find that the cover and all the pages have leaves of rotten stinking cabbage stuck to them. The stench is terrible, and the pages are ruined. Someone has played a stupid joke on you, and now you’ve got fetid cabbage juice all over your fingers.
• Cabbage/Glass: A beautiful but enormous cabbage, realistically created out of glass. The artist is proudly showing it off, flicking it with his fingers and making a ‘pinging’ sound. Everyone’s standing around with glasses of wine appreciating it. Personally you think it’s ridiculous and ugly.
• Glass/Mouse: You go to drink a glass of wine, to find that the wine has gone and there’s a tiny mouse in the bottom of the glass. The mouse is clearly drunk, and is wearing a party hat with streamers over his shoulder. A party blow-out extends limply from his mouth, and he’s hiccuping bubbles, like a seventies cartoonist’s depiction of a drunkard.
• Mouse/Stomach: Unfortunately I can think only of that urban myth unfairly surrounding Richard Gere some years ago. If you’re not familiar with it, then imagine your tummy full of squeaking mice, which then stream out of your navel like the rats out of Hamelin.
• Stomach/Cardboard: A pregnant lady covering her stomach with cardboard from old boxes. Taping it around her, until she is enormous. Now she feels protected.
• Cardboard/Ferry: Image of a big P&O ferry sinking in the sea because in a spectacularly misjudged move to save money, the entire boat was manufactured out of cardboard. People are escaping from dinghies, unaware that they are made not from rubber but from ordinary paper.
• Ferry/Christmas: A little ferry sat on top of a Christmas tree, perhaps at a school for the hard of hearing. Little streamers, windows, everything. Tinsel around the hull.
• Christmas/Athlete: It’s you and all the relations you normally spend Christmas with, running around a race-track in the snow with party hats and crackers trying to beat Kelly Holmes to the finish-line. Your nan is doing superbly, racing ahead in her coat, hat and bag, giving the double-gold winner a run for her money.
• Athlete/Key: The winning athlete is given a four-foot-long golden key on a ribbon as a prize. She tries to hold it up for the audience as the National Anthem plays, but it’s extremely heavy, and she wishes she could have just had an ordinary medal.
• Key/Wigwam: A key hangs unnoticed from the headgear of a Native American Indian who is unable to get into his wigwam to go to the loo. Hugely frustrating for him. You can picture him, all red-faced. See the key glinting in the light as he searches for it.
• Wigwam/Baby: Latest New Age fad: put your baby to sleep every night in a wigwam. Dream-catcher included. Imagine a giant baby asleep inside, snoring, making the sides of the wigwam suck in and blow out.
• Baby/Kiwi: A baby shoving green furry kiwi fruit into its mouth. One after another. A huge pile of them waiting to be eaten. Green kiwi juice all down its bib. Throwing up kiwi vomit. He loves kiwis, the little tinker.
• Kiwi/Bed: Tucking up a little kiwi for the night in a big king-size bed. Pulling the covers almost over it, then sitting next to it and reading it a story about the Little Kiwi, until it falls asleep.
• Bed/Paintbrush: You’ve changed your décor and the bed no longer matches. So rather than buy new covers, you paint them the same colour as the walls. Sloshing paint over the entire bed, watching it go hard and uncomfortable.
• Paintbrush/Walnut: Not owning a nutcracker, you’re forced to try and smash open a great big walnut with the end of a paintbrush. Trouble is, you’re using the brush end, which isn’t working, and there’s paint splashing everywhere. It’s a mess, but you really want that walnut.

Now minimise the window again and see how many words you can recall now, start by thinking of the "telephone" and see where it takes you. You should be able to easily recall the whole list. As a bonus round try recalling the list in reverse order starting with "walnut", it should be just as easy.

The Major / Consonant System

The Major or Consonant system is probably the most common peg system in use. First you translate digits into consonants, I use the following which is provided in Derren Brown's Trick of the Mind as this is what I have become use to, but feel free to adapt or create your own as desired.

0. z/s - Z is in zero and the S sound is most similar to Z
1. l - They look similar (l for lemur)
2. n - two downward strokes on a small n
3. m - three downward strokes
4. r - fouR
5. f/v - FiVe, again they are similar sounds
6. b/p - b looks simlar to 6 and P and B sound and look similar
7. t - 7 looks like a capital T
8. ch/sh/j - the GH in eiGHt, and then the J is the nearest to these sounds
9. g - a written g can resemble a 9

Each consonant is then associated with a short word that contains that consonant.

0. z/s - zoo
1. l - ale
2. n - hen
3. m - ham
4. r - whore
5. f/v - hive
6. b/g - bee
7. t - tea
8. ch/sh/j - shoe
9. g - goo

for two-digit numbers, convert each digit into a consonant using the table above. Then find a word that uses those two consonants as their first two consonants.

10. l, z/s - lice
11. l, l - lily
12. l, n - line
13. l, m - lime
14. l, r - lorry
15. l, f/v - laugh
16. l, b/p - lip
17. l, t - light
18. l, ch/sh/j - ledge
19. l, g - leg
20. n, z/s - nose
21. n, l - nail
22. n, n - nanny
23. n, m - gnome
24. n, r - nero

I have only supplied words up to 24 as this is all you will need for a Bitcoin seed phrase but for other applications you would normally have a list of words up to 99 or even 999.

Once you have your list of words and their associated numbers, you then use the linking system to link the index word with the word in your seed phrase, so the first word in your seed phrase will be linked with the word "ale" the sixth word in your seed phrase will be linked with "bee" and so on and so forth.

Take the following seed phrase for example:

1. joke
2. owner
3. layer
4. tail
5. diagram
6. armor
7. input
8. train
9. head
10. promote
11. tuition
12. eager

You might link the words as follows.

1. joke / ale - drinking a pint of ale and laughing at a joke and choking on it and coughing ale all over yourself.
2. owner / hen - Visualize a hen laying golden eggs and the proud owner showing it off to an envious neighbor.
3. layer / ham - peeling layers of pork off a small ham like an onion.
4. tail / whore - you get back to your room with a whore and are surprised to find a big fluffy tail when she drops her draws.
5. diagram / hive - you are working on a big blueprint/diagram of a hive, imagine it in front of you on a drawing board.
6. armor / bee - a high armoured medieval bee, perhaps on horseback with a spear.
7. input / tea - you are using a vending machine and instead of taking coins the coin slot takes teabags for payment, imaging selecting an item and inputting tea bags for payment.
8. train / shoe - imagine a big shoe train, a steam train that is a shoe with wheels on the bottom pulling a carriages down a train track.
9. head / goo - you are on I'm a celeb and have to plunge you head into a big bucket of goo.
10. promote / lice - two lice soldiers, one has been given a promotion the other is pinning a medal on his chest.
11. tuition / lily - Imagine you are in a classroom, but instead of desks, there are giant lily pads. Each student, including you, has to sit atop a lily pad. The tuition fee for the course is actually a handful of lily flowers, which you hand to the instructor.
12. eager / line - Picture a group of people standing in a line, so eager they begin stretching their necks out like giraffes to see the front of the line, vying for the first glimpse of what's to come.

Once you have compiled your list, think of a number between 1 and 12 and turn the number into your peg word and see what image emerges. That should then get you back to your seed word. Try a few with the example above.

And there you have it, once you have completed the exercise above for your seed phrase or phrases, you have now stored your life savings in your head and are safe in the knowledge that you have an always on backup for when disaster strikes. Although this method is very powerful you will need to run through the list every do often to keep it truly cemented.

links

• https://artofmemory.com/