The Sounds

  • 0 – Z, S, soft C
  • 1 – T, D, TH
  • 2 – N
  • 3 – M
  • 4 – R
  • 5 – L
  • 6 – J, CH, SH, soft G
  • 7 – K, Q, hard C, hard G
  • 8 – F, V, PH
  • 9 – P, B

Putting the Technique to Use

You may have already guessed this, but the longer a number is, the harder it is to find a word to represent it. Because of this, it is necessary to combine words to memorize long numbers. There are two good ways to do this.

Using Phrases to Memorize Numbers

Once way to memorize a long number is to just use a phrase or sentence instead of individual words. We’ll use pi as an example number to memorize. Using some creativity and experimentation, you might come up with a sentence like

I might write a lab in jail

which represents 314159265. If you want to remember even more digits you might come up with

Mighty hero, to you who will banish all my love—a big bohemian ham for a change.

which is 31415926535897932384626, not to mention a very weird sentence. You might guess that the more numbers you try to memorize, the harder it is to find a representative sentence. If you can find a sentence to memorize a number then you will probably memorize it very easily and be able to remember it for a long time. But making a phrase or sentence for every number is very difficult, and certainly takes a long time, which is why we need a second technique…

Linking a List to Memorize Numbers

This is definitely the more useful of the two methods. To memorize a long number, just break it into smaller numbers and find words to represent each of the smaller segments. Then, using the technique explained in Linking Lists, chain together all of these words in order to form the longer number. Again, we’ll us pi as an example:

314 15 926 53 58 979 323 846 26
mother towel banjo lamb elf pickup M&M fridge nachos

By memorizing the list “mother, towel, banjo…,” you can memorize the first 23 digits of pi. With a little practice, the process of linking a list of numbers is very fast and can be done completely in your head. This method can be used to learn phone numbers, your credit card numbers, or any other number you would like to memorize.