How To Memorize All The Names Of The Dwarves From 'The Hobbit'

If you're gonna go see 'The Hobbit' in theaters next week (which if you aren't, you need to seriously re-evaluate your life priorities), you'll need some help memorizing some of the main characters' names. There are a lot of them. Especially dwarves. And they all look the same and have weird dwarvish names. But first things first. "Dwarves" is spelled with a 'v' - not "dwarfs" with an 'f.' It's a Tolkien thing. If you wanna be cool while talking about multiple dwarves, don't ever say that 'f.' EVER. You'll be cast out to Mordor by your cosplaying Gandalf friends.

Next, you gotta learn all the dwarves' names as a group so if anyone ever asks you "what are the names of all the dwarves from 'The Hobbit'?" you'll be like "bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam and BAM - in your FACE!" So here we go....

13 dwarves in all (in the order that they are introduced in the book and most likely the movie as well): Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Thorin. If you can say all of those in one go already without looking, you're pretty groovy. If you can't, keep reading and picture the following story:

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Imagine you're facing a wall with a big painted 'D' on it ("d-wall" - Dwalin), when suddenly a ball comes flying out of nowhere and slams into the wall ("ball" - Balin). As it hits the wall, the ball hits and kills a flea ("kills" - Kili; "flea" - Fili). The wall then turns into a door ("door" - Dori). As you walk through this door, you are nose-up, ignoring everything around you, even all the gold and ore ("ignoring" - Nori; "ore" - Ori) shining around you. You trip suddenly and shout "Oi!" as you hit yourself in the groin by accident ("oi" - Oin; "groin" - Gloin). As you get back up, you wave bye to a furry creature ("bye fur" - Bifur) that is puffing ("puff" - Bofur) on a bomb that is being lit. Finally the bomb rolls right in front of you and explodes ("bomb" - Bombur) as you see Thor laughing in the distance ("Thor" - Thorin).

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Ok, now for the juicy stuff. While the action is going on on screen, you wanna be able to recognize and name each dwarf so that you can annoyingly whisper to your friends throughout the movie, things like "that's Bifur, did you know that?" and "isn't Bombur such a fatty, oh Bombur you fatty." So let's go through them all, one-by-one. If you don't understand what I'm doing below, read up on my older blog post on how to memorize names. The quick recap is as follows: come up with an association between the name and a distinguishing feature of the person, or in this case, dwarf.

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Dwalin

Dwalin is the only dwarf who's partially bald. He also has a tattoo etched into his cranium (you can't see it in this photo, but he does). So his distinguishing feature will be his bare dome. The name Dwalin sounds like "wall" so imagine him using his bare skull to barge down a wall. He also looks like a bad-ass, and bad-asses are always head-butting people into walls, right? Yup.

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Balin

Balin is pretty easy to recognize because he is the oldest of all the dwarfs, and he looks it. In terms of a distinguishing feature, he's the only dwarf with a grey/white, un-braided beard. Just a straight-up, cool, old man beard. The name Balin reminds me of a "ball," so picture a ball being thrown into his big, big fluffy beard and it just landing - poof - all soft and cushiony. Fun fact: Balin is Dwalin's older brother. Not-so-fun fact: Balin is the same dwarf that's buried in the tomb that the fellowship finds in the Mines of Moria (in LOTR). I think he got shot by Orc's. Bummer.

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Kili

Kili is one of the youngest and I the least dwarf-looking of all of them. He's also got the shortest, lamest, most non-existant dwarf beard (he looks like me after a few days of not shaving)....which is kinda against dwarf code, but that's Peter Jackson's poor character design. Anyways, let's use the fact that he has the shortest beard. His name sounds like "kill" so I would imagine him killing people with a knife and then using that knife to trim his own beard super short. He also has the best eyesight out of all the dwarves (he's always sent forth to lookout for evil things... things that might "kill" them...dun, dun, dun).

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Fili

Kili's bro. Another dwarf that looks sort of "man-ish" and not very dwarf-like, but his most distinguishing feature is his braided, blonde, dangly moustache (I need to grow one of these for Movember next year). Fili sounds like "fill", so imagine filling up his moustache with braids. Or even crazier, imagine filling up his dangling moustache with "fleas" (also sounds like Fili). Yuck. Fun fact: Kili and Fili are the son's of Thorin's sister, Dis (who is rumored to have sported a pretty mean beard. In other words, she was a total babe).

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Dori

Dori looks like the brother from the movie "Step Brothers" (John Reilly)...or at least he does to me. There was a lot of door-slamming in that movie, since both brothers hated eachother at first. "Door" sounds like Dori. If you've never seen "Step Brothers" (which is sad news), then use his massive potato-sized schnoz as his distinguishing feature. Then imagine slamming a door in his face, thus causing his nose to swell up to the size of a potato.

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Nori

Good god, Nori has one of the most amazing braided facial hair set-ups I've ever seen! His eyebrows are braided upwards into his hair. That's just ridiculous. Anyways, just imagine that his facial hair is so impressive, that it's just too hard to "ignore." Nori = "ignore."

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Ori

Fun fact: remember in the first LOTR movie when Gandalf reads from the book that was laying against Balin's tomb in the Mines of Moria? That was Ori who wrote that. So yeah, he died too...but way after 'The Hobbit' (I'm not spoiling anything!). Ok, Ori has the worst haircut out of all the dwarves (although that's debatable). Either way, it's a bowl cut. The name Ori sounds like "ore," as in gold. Imagine his hair was actually a bowl and if you flipped it over, it was suddenly filled with mounds and mounds of gangsta bling gold (or ore). Another fun fact: Dori, Nori, and Ori are all brothers (their parents were obviously really creative with their names...).

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Oin

Oin is brothers with Gloin and to me, is in serious need of some facial hair grooming - it's all just a bit overgrown for my liking. You can use two things here as his feature: his massive curving moustache handlebars or his awesomely braided beard pig-tails. Both stick out pretty prominently, so let's use them. The name Oin, reminds me of a British punk saying "oi!" so let's picture Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols being an ass and tying his handlebars and pig-tails together while shouting "Oi! Oi! Oi!"

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Gloin

Gloin is easy because he's the dad of Gimli (the only dwarf in the Lord of The Rings trilogy - Gimli son of Gloin) and they look nearly identical. If you don't think so or know nothing about LOTR (ughh), then use his dark reddish hair (not super clear in this picture, but it's there). He's the only dwarf with such deep brown-red hair (Bombur has red hair too, but it's more light orange than red). Gloin sounds like "groin" so imagine the old phrase that asks "does the carpet match the drapes?"....you get the idea....his red hair is probably the same color as the hair which is surrounding his groin. Not a pleasant thought, especially since he's a Tolkien dwarf, but hey - it works. Fun fact: Gloin went to the Council of Elrond with Gimli in the first LOTR movie. He's sitting there in that scene, but it's hard to tell which one is him....

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Bifur

This dwarf has a piece of axe stuck in his head (no idea why - I don't even know if that was ever mentioned in the book). Picture some type of furry creature saying and waving "bye!" and then flinging that piece of axe into his head, as if meaning to kill him. "Bye-fur" = "Bifur." FYI, he enjoys raspberry jam and apple-tart. He's also the cousin of Bofur and Bombur.

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Bofur

He's the only dwarf with a hat, and a pretty massive hat at that. Let's use that. Bofur is a tough name to come up with a picture for, but it sounds to me like the word "puffer" (it's pronounced that way anyways, but with a 'b'). So imagine diving under his hat and puffing and puffing until his hat gets bigger and bigger so that it's as massive as it already is. Another option might be to think of "boff" as a sound one might make if being hit on top of the head. Imagine someone "boffing" him on top of the head, making his hat get stuck on tightly.

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Bombur

The fattest dwarf EVER. His name is pretty easy just because of that alone. He's round like a bomb. "Bomb" = Bombur. Or think of it like this, he eats so much that he's always on the verge of exploding, like a bomb. He's da bomb(ur), yo! Super fun fact: Frodo asks about him in LOTR and is told that later in life, Bombur got so fat that he could only move from his bed or couch when six dwarves lifted him....in other words, he probably got his own special on the Discovery Channel.

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Thorin

Thorin reminds me of "Thor," which reminds me of Thor's hammer. Since Thorin is the leader of the clan, a descendant of king dwarves of old, and the most seemingly important dwarf of them all, imagine him ruling the other dwarves with a big hammer. He's also got some grey streaks in his beard, probably similar to the color of the hammer itself, so imagine hammering his hair with big heavy blows, causing streaks of his hair to turn grey.

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Andddd we're done. Go buy your tickets and watch the midnight showing this Thursday and be all cool, knowing who each character is. Don't you hate those movies where there are just way too many characters to remember and you can never recognize any of them? NOT THIS TIME.

Just to make sure, test yourself:

WMC Day 3 - Random Words, Spoken Numbers, & Speed Cards

LAST DAY!!

I love all these events, and they"re probably my best.

Random Words
15 minutes to memorize as many random words as possible. The words are separated into columns of 20 and you get scored on how many columns you get perfectly correct. A perfect column gives you 20 points, one mistake gives you half that (10). I love this event because I get to use some journeys that have a really strong meaning to me....and I guess that"s why I"m pretty decent at it.

The world record is 300 words (insane!) held by Simon Reinhard (again!).

Spoken Numbers

This event is pretty impressive to watch. Most people would probably freak out at how well most competitors do, as it can seem kind of impossible if you don"t know how they"re doing it. Memorize as many digits as possible via audio (you don"t get to see the numbers) at a rate of 1 digits per second. What makes this event hard is that once each digit is said, you can"t go back online roulette and double check it - once it"s said, it"s gone. So either you got it or not. The other hard part is that it"s so damn fast! 1-digit per second can quickly become very overwhelming. But not with practice :)

The world record for this event is 300 digits in a row by Wang Feng. Pretty solid. My best is around 220 digits.

Speed Cards

Finally, the grand finale. Memorize a deck of playing cards as fast as possible. Years ago, it used to be impressive if you could do it under 50 seconds. But now it"s commonplace to do it under 30 seconds. I"m guessing a sub-20 second mark will happen pretty soon too. I"ve seen Simon Reinhard (who holds the world record at 21.19 seconds) attempt a sub-20 second time. Pretty sick, if you ask me. Either way, it"s a great way to end the competition and it"s a fun event to watch since you can pretty much feel the tention in the room as everyone speeds to the finish line.

There you have it. 10 disciplines over 3 days. The person with the most points overall is crowned World Memory Champion. I have a feeling Simon will win it this year, but you never know. Him and Johannes are always neck and neck throughout most competitions.

WMC Day 2 – Abstract Images, Speed Numbers, Historic Dates, 1 Hour Cards

Alright, day 2! Abstract Images

This event is kind of an odd one. Looks hard and seems like it might be impossible to come up with a system for, but it's actually pretty easy to master once you figure out the strategy. Hence, those who know it or have one, they just destroy this event, memorizing the order of 300+ images in 15 minutes. An abstract image, on first glance, kinda looks like a blob from a Rorschach Test. But upon further inspection, you can figure out that there are about 100-200 different patterns (printed on a larger selection of shapes). Most people ignore the shape and just focus on the pattern. If you have an image for each pattern, you can use a simple PAO and Memory Palace to memorize them. The trick is to make sure you know all the patterns, and that takes some sneaky practice of going through old competition papers and bugging Ben Pridmore for his flash cards, hehe.

You get 15 minutes to memorize as many rows of images (5 per row). And then you have to put each row back in the same order during recall. The world record is 396 images held by Simon Reinhard.

Speed Numbers

Two trials of memorizing as many digits as possible in 5 minutes. The digits are separated in rows of 40. Simple. Do as many as you can. Wang Feng holds the record for 500 digits (which is absolutely nuts). Think of it this way: if Wang Feng was at a bar and had 50 hot babes lined up in front of him offering their phone numbers, he'd get them all memorized in 5 minutes. Who said memory techniques aren't useful?

Historic Dates

This event is super fun for me. Memorize a year (1000-2100) along with some type of fictional event (ex: 1765 "aliens land on earth"). You get 5 minutes to memorize as many pairs as possible. During recall you get a jumbled list of events and you have to write the correct year next to them.

Johannes Mallow is a master of this event, holding a record of 132 dates in 5 minutes. This event is all practice. No one is good at this unless they've practiced it a ton. Plain and simple. Mallow clearly practices a lot.

1 Hour Cards

Like 1-hour numbers, but with cards. Memorize as many decks as possible in 1 hour. Ben Pridmore holds the record with.....you ready for this? TWENTY EIGHT decks! Ridiculous. Doing over 10 decks is pretty impressive....but 28? Damn. The world record for most decks ever memorized is something like 58 or 59, held by Dave Farrow. But who knows how long he took to do that.

Into The Mind

.....appropriately named documentary coming out next Fall. Made by the folks who brought you "All.I.Can" (another awesome skiing documentary). This trailer is sick, especially because of the shots of Everest. Can't believe I'll be out there again so soon. I'm so stoked though!! http://vimeo.com/54348266

WMC Day 1 - Names, Faces, Binary, & Numbers

Names & Faces The competition starts with each competitor getting a packet of random photos (headshots) of strangers, ranging in race and ethnicity. The names beneath them are randomly chosen as well (ranging in country origin). The difficulty with this event has become the extreme difficulty of names - they can get pretty nasty. For us Americans, some of the eastern European names with weird accents and markings can kill us; same with Chinese, Indian, and Arabic names. What adds to the difficulty is that you can also get mixtures of first names from one country with a last name from another - it can get pretty ugly. But that's all in the spirit of competition, right? While "Bob" might be easy for me to remember and "Zhao" rather hard, a Chinese competitor might consider the opposite to be true. Anyways, you get 15 minutes to memorize as many names as you can and then 20 minutes to recall. During the recall, you have to write down as many first and last names on a different packet that has the same headshots (jumbled up), but no names. 1 point for each correct first and last name (2 possible points per person). -.5 points for a wrong name, and +.5 points if a name is spelled out phonetically correct.

The current world record is 173 names. Doesn't sound like much, but ever since the standards changed a year or so ago (making the names a lot harder), the world record has been tough to get super high....could you memorize "muhammodd guntheirssun" , "Xiao Luzenshleigenzor", or "magnussmeyer weidelsteinzhu" easily? yeah, it's hard (not that hard, but still hard). I'm pretty good at names...at the USA competition I hit 160+ names....in practice I've gotten over 200. But those are American names. I'd love to hit 130-150 at the WMC.

30-Minute Binary

30 minutes to study and memorize a seemingly endless list of binary digits (that's just 1's and 0's). The numbers are laid out in rows of 30 digits per line. It's actually a lot easier than it might seem because you can convert bigger groups of 1's and 0's into decimal numbers (1-10)....some people take a row of 30 and convert it into one single image! Pretty impressive. To me the hardest part is keeping focus on such a visually boring set of numbers for such a long period of time. By the end of the 30 minutes, everything I look at turns into a 1 or a 0, haha. Scoring is simple. For each correct row, you get 30 points. If you make one digit error on a row, you get 15 points. More than one digit error per row scores you 0.

The current world record is 4,140 digits, held by Ben Pridmore. Yeah.....and what's more impressive about that record is that it hasn't been broken since 2007....Ben just set the bar too frigging high. I'm not too good at this event (which is stupid because I'm a computer scientist), so I am just aiming for 2000 digits. Decent enough. I don't really care to ever be good at this event. In my opinion, it's dumb and pointless.

1-Hour Numbers

The final event for the day is another long one. 1 hour to memorize as many decimal digits as possible (0-9). Rows are 40 digits long, with 500 digits per page. Again, this event is really all about maintaining focus for long periods of time. It definitely takes a huge mental toll. Scoring is similar to Binary, where each correct row gives 40 points. One digit mistake in a row, gives you half (20), and more than one digit mistake gives you zilch.

The current world record is 2,660 digits. Pretty crazy. Breaking 1000 is pretty incredible in itself. My goal is 2000. Did I mention I love numbers?

World Memory Championships T-minus 1 Month

With the World Memory Championships in just about one month from today (in jolly ol' England), I figured I'd go through all of the 10 disciplines in detail, one-by-one, for those who don't know a lick about what this competition is and for those who just want to hear my views on it. First things first: this will be my first world championship competition. I have competed in other international events but never the big kahuna. If I end up doing well in this competition it could shoot me up the world rankings quite a bit. At the moment, I'm sitting at 24, but I feel like I should be top ten. We shall see!

Stay tuned, first up will be day 1: Names & Faces, Binary Numbers, and One Hour Numbers.

How To Memorize The Presidents

To memorize the US Presidents may seem like an arduous task – 44 names in all – but by using a simple technique, they can be learned quickly, in about 15 minutes. Not only is this a great way to learn the Presidents, it"s also a great memory exercise, as well as a great way to pass the time while you wait in those monstrous voting lines today. There are a few ways to approach memorizing the 44 Presidents in order, but I’m going to keep it as simple as possible – by using the Linking Method. The Linking Method works by taking a sequence of pieces of information and linking them together by association. That means, taking the first item in a list and somehow associating it with the next, then taking that next item and associating it with the next, and so on. The idea is that as you move along, recalling the list, each item in the list leads you to the next item (because each is linked to the next).

There are 44 US Presidents (well, 44 different Presidential Terms, and we are coming up on the 45th) each with a first, middle, and last name. We are going to focus on the last names first. Any extra information you might want to add afterwards can be done once the main linked list is set in your mind. Once that is set, you can add the full name, maybe even the Vice President who joined him, and even the years he served in office.

To start with the Linking Method, take each item in your list (in this case, a president"s last name) and turn it into a mental picture. The picture should be based on something wild, bizarre, sexual, grotesque, or weird, because those are the things we remember best. Let"s take the first president"s name: “Washington”. We want to turn that name into something we can picture in our mind"s eye. The most memorable way to do this is by transforming it into something it sounds like, say, a “washing machine.” A washing machine is easy to picture – the whirring sound of it makes, it"s strong white color, the water swishing around inside, it"s clunky size. Plus, it"s random. We are trying to memorize the Presidents here, why is there a washing machine in the mix? That"s exactly the point; it makes our linked story memorable.

What we are going to do with the rest of the names of Presidents is turn them into similarly weird and random images and then link them all together into a vibrant and bizarre story (with each image linking to the next). The key word here is to “visualize”, not to try and memorize it. Try to “see” each image in your mind as vividly as possible, trying to use as many of your senses, and the memorization will follow. The following story might take a few read-throughs, but you should have the story down pat in less than 15 minutes. To transfer it over to your long-term memory, just review the story frequently at first, then less so over time.

Let"s start with the list of images for each name, then we’ll weave it into a linked story:

Washington – washing machine Adams – apples (as in Adam’s Apples) Jefferson – chef (chef-erson) Madison – maid (maid-ison) Monroe – man rowing Quincy Adams – squinting at a dam Jackson – Michael Jackson Van Buren – van burning Harrison – Harry Potter Tyler – necktie Polk – poking (the action of poking) Taylor - tail Fillmore – filmer (someone filming with a camera) Pierce – piercing (the action of piercing something) Buchanan – book-canon Lincoln – President Lincoln Johnson – toilet or john Grant – grant (college grant) Hayes – being hazed Garfield – Garfield the Cat Arthur – King Arthur (sword in the stone) Cleveland – Cleveland, Ohio Harrison – Harry Potter (again) Cleveland – Cleveland, Ohio (again) McKinley – Mt. McKinley Roosevelt (Teddy) – teddy bear Taft - raft Wilson – Wilson volleyball Harding – hard Coolidge – acting cool Hoover – hoover or vacuum cleaner Roosevelt – rose Truman – truthful man Eisenhower – eye power JFK (Kennedy) – JFK airport LBJ (Johnson) – PB&J sandwich Nixon – knickers Ford – Ford car Carter - car Reagan – ray-gun Bush - bush Clinton – Clinton himself Bush Jr. – bush (again) Obama – bomb

Don’t worry if you don’t have all of those committed to memory yet, the story will help. Here goes:

Start Here:

Start by picturing a washing machine (Washington) washing a ton of bright-green Granny Smith apples (Adams). Along comes a chubby chef (Jefferson) who takes the apples out of the washing machine and puts on a maid’s uniform (Madison). He then gets inside of a rowing boat and starts rowing; he is a man rowing (Monroe). As the chef in a maid’s costume rows downstream, he sees something off in the distance. Squinting to see what it is, he sees a dam (Quincy Adams). On top of the dam is Michael Jackson (Jackson) doing the Moonwalk and grabbing his crotch. A burning van (Van Buren) comes out of nowhere and slams into him; blood splatters everywhere. Harry Potter (Harrison) suddenly shows up and by using his wand, he magically transforms the burning wreck into a necktie (Tyler), which he floats over to himself and ties around his neck. The necktie comes alive and starts poking (Polk) Harry Potter in the face. In fact, the necktie pokes him so hard that a tail (Taylor) pops out of his read-end. Being that this is all pretty weird, a filmer (Fillmore) begins to document the whole charade on film. But, by accident, the camera that the filmer is using happens to fire arrows instead of shoot film. The arrows pierce (Pierce) the back of a cannon lying off to the side. This triggers the cannon to launch a bunch of book-shaped cannonballs (Buchanan) BOOM, landing on President Lincoln’s (Lincoln) feet. He happens to be sitting across the way, on a toilet, or a john (Johnson). His son, he tells you randomly, just received a grant (Grant) to go to college and is joining a fraternity. He is in the process of being hazed (Hayes). Part of the hazing process involves shaving Garfield (Garfield) the Cat. As the cat is being shaved though, the cat pulls out a sword from a stone like King Arthur (Arthur) in his defense. The shaving stops immediately and the cat runs away, escaping as far away as he can to Cleveland (Cleveland), Ohio. Remember Harry Potter? Well, that’s the cat’s best friend. He gives Harry Potter (Harrison) a call and convinces him to join him in Cleveland (Cleveland, again). So he does. Once he arrives, they decide to go on an expedition to Alaska to climb Mt. McKinley (McKinley), the tallest mountain in America. While there, they run into big bears, Teddy Bears (Teddy Roosevelt), in fact. To avoid them, they jump into a raft (Taft) that takes them down the river off into the wilderness. Sadly, they get stranded on the raft for many days and go a bit insane, naming a volleyball they found, Wilson (Wilson), to keep them company. In the midst of their insanity, they find a CD player in the river that shockingly still works. Listening to it, they find that it is playing some hard (Harding) rock. They both start feeling all cool (Coolidge) while listening to it and decide to vacuum, or hoover (Hoover) the raft to make it clean. Suddenly the raft pops as they find themselves having gone through an over-grown set of rose (Roosevelt, different one) branches with thorns. They swim to shore where they find themselves even more stranded than before.

It is in these hard times, that they decide to become truthful men (Truman). Using their minds together and their eyes’ power (Eisenhower), they see a plane passing by high above. Making a rope out of branches and vines, they manage to latch onto the plane and hitch a ride to safety. The plane takes them all the way to JFK (JFK) Airport in NYC. Starving, they beg for some food and score some awesome PB&J sandwiches. Unfortunately the sandwiches don’t have peanut butter on them and instead have light butter, so it’s really an LB&J (LBJ). After feeding themselves, they take off their knickers (Nixon) and jump into a stranded Ford (Ford) car (Carter) sitting outside the terminal. Inside the car, they find a ray-gun (Reagan) attached to its roof. As they drive along, they fire the gun like crazy and even use it to mow down a big bush (Bush) in their path. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker named Clinton (Clinton), run through another bush (Bush), and then all explode into a fiery blaze as they run into a bomb (Obama) that happens to be laying in the middle of the street.

The End

Tada! Easy as pie. I know it’s the dumbest story every, but re-read it and really try and visualize the story! It’s easy to remember and fun!

Another step you can take is to mark every 5th president in the list with a number so you can find which president was 25th, 19th, or 41st, etc, in a matter of seconds. To do this, go back over the story and add the following images/explanations:

1. Washington (1st president, on a dollar bill, easy) 5. Monroe (imagine there are 5 oars attached to the row-boat) 10. Tyler (he ties 10 neckties around his neck) 15. Buchanan (imagine precisely 15 book-shaped cannonballs being fired) 20. Garfield (he’s a fat cat, weighing 20 lbs.) 25. McKinley (the mountain is nearly 25,000 ft. above sea-level) 30. Coolidge (imagine they pop 30 pills of speed and that’s why they have the sudden urge to vacuum) 35. JFK (the minimum age to be president is 35; also, JFK was a very young president) 40. Reagan (from their shooting spree with the ray-gun, they cause 40 casualties) With this numerically tagged system, people can ask you the 26th president, for example, and you’ll remember McKinley as the 25th and then move on to the next image (Teddy Bears = Teddy Roosevelt). If someone asks you 13th president, for example, you would first remember Tyler, the 10th president, and then move up three images in the story (neckties are poking Harry Potter in the face, he grows a tail, then a filmer starts filming the scene = Fillmore!), etc.

To add more detail to each president, simply take each image and give it more detail and links to the sub-data you wish to add. For example, the 43rd President is George W. Bush. We only memorized Bush in our story (we pictured a bush). Now, take that image of a bush and give it more detail. Maybe instead of it being just a plain old bush, picture George of the Jungle swinging from tree-to-tree inside it, and instead of swinging from a standard rope, picture him swinging from a W shaped rope. Voila. The amount of detail you can add is limitless and depends on how far you want to take it.

As you get more comfortable with the story and its details, it will eventually become natural for you to recall and you might not even need the story from that point forward. This technique is a way to get the information in your head quickly.

Note: There is another technique that is a bit more powerful than this one called the Journey Method. I don’t describe it here because I believe the technique described above is the fastest way to memorize the Presidents without much preparation.

Alzheimer's Walk 2012

Well today was supposed to be the annual Miami-Dade Walk To End Alzheimer's walk but it was cancelled because there's a hurricane nearby and it's causing all sorts of wind and rain. I was looking forward to being able to support the cause, but Oh well....The good news is that there'll be another walk a bit further north in Florida that my team will walk instead, mid November. If you're in the Broward area, make sure to join us on Nov. 10th to do it! I'll give you some memory tips! Speaking of November, it'll be National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness month. That means going out and spreading the word about what Alzheimer's is and how it is affecting millions of people in the USA alone. Here at Climb For Memory, we are devoted to spreading awareness in a unique way, namely, by climbing mountains. If you want to help support us and the cause, consider making a donation here (All donations are tax-deductible).

Did anyone catch me on The Dr. Oz Show yesterday?? If you missed it, I'll be posting the video soon.

The Pantheon Games

I know sometimes I blab a bit much about Crossfit this and Crossfit that, but it's my way of staying fit for a). my climbing endeavors and b). my memory training. Believe me, it puts me in incredible shape in both regards. Anyways, this past weekend was a local Miami competition called the Pantheon Games. It was my first real Crossfit competition, and even though I was probably a bit in over my head, I always think just throwing yourself in the deep end is the best way to learn and improve. I did the same thing 4 years ago at the 2009 USA Memory Competition and look where it lead me!

I trained pretty damn hard for this competition over the past month and a half or so. As a result, I actually broke some of my long-standing barriers for my body. For one, my body weight. I've always been 205-210lbs. After my Peru climb I was down to 200 flat. To make things worse, I've always had trouble putting on weight, which I need more of to get stronger. So finally I forced myself to start eating a LOT more (healthier too) and now im over 220lb - and it's all muscle. And I keep getting so much stronger now. Lifting more, lasting longer during workouts, etc. It always amazes me what the body can do when you really push it and focus on a goal. I've been doing 2-a-day workouts some days and taking a rest day every 10th day. I thought my body would get burnt out but it hasn't. Instead, it started adapting to the frequent workouts and learned how to recover faster.

The same applies to my memory training. I've been boosting my training sessions for the upcoming World Championships in December, and even though I thought I'd been sitting at plateaus, not improving much, suddenly I've been shooting past my personal bests. It's pretty exciting.

For those of you who struggle with your own plateaus in whatever field it may be, just remember that whatever point you are currently at now, no matter how limiting it may seem, there are always ways to surpass them. ALWAYS. You just need to find a way to train differently, train harder, train more! That's probably the single most important thing I've learned over the past few years while doing all this memory stuff.

When It Rains It Pours

Some days things just flow into perfect synchronization....Monday was one of those days.

I took a much needed rest day last Sunday from everything. Physical training AND mental training. I just needed a day to relax and stop thinking about all the big things that are coming up. When the Monday came around and I resumed my training....BOOM, everything seemed to be working in overdrive, perfectly in tune. I did two of my best card memorizations times ever, as well as the most digits I"ve ever memorized in 5 minutes. And it felt easier than usual. On top of all that, my workout felt great. I felt stronger than usual and I felt like I could have worked out forever. Such a great feeling.

To put the icing on the cake, I was asked to be on the Dr. Oz show this online casino's Friday.

So, the moral of today"s story is: Don"t let yourself get burned out. Take a day off to just veg out and remove yourself from your daily grind, whatever that may be. Take a day to do something else and don"t even think about the things you typically do on a day to day basis. A quick refresh is sometimes all you need to take yourself to the next level.

TEDx Talk Is Live!

Hi all....wanted to share a video with you! My recent TEDx talk! Hope you enjoy :) http://youtu.be/ESGEW_uK1Jg

Face-Name Memory IQ

How good are you at names? Washington University in St. Louis just released a game (more like a short survey/study) that people can participate in to test their Face-Name memory IQ. It's free, it takes 10 minutes, it's fun, and you are helping them with their amazing memory research. These are the same people that have scanned my brain and tested my memory in all sorts of different ways. They will also be designing memory experiments for my upcoming Everest climb. So give them a hand, and play the game:

PLAY HERE!

Here is a more in-depth article about the game and the research that WUSTL is doing: Article here!

If you played it and sucked, I would recommend reading my blog post about how to remember names like a pro :D (Click here).

New Orleans News Segment

A couple weeks ago I was in New Orleans for the AARP conference to help promote life'sDHA (an omega-3 supplement I take religiously). The local news had me on for a short interview. Not the most exciting clip, but here it is nonetheless. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQnUyy3zSEw&feature=youtu.be

September Over...Hello October!

Phew, September was crazy. Positives were that I got a bunch accomplished this month: a number of big talks, filmed a new memory video for Fusion IO, did a TEDx talk, competed in a Crossfit competition - the negatives were that it was hard to keep all my memory training in order because of being so busy. From now until December 14th though (the World Memory Champion), I'll be free to train again like I used to. Finally I'll have a lot of uninterrupted time. I've been upping my training for my Everest climb this past month. Almost 6-7 times a week I'm in the gym lifting, running, sprinting, pushing, pulling, jumping, everything. I'm feeling VERY strong. Honestly, stronger than I've ever felt in my whole life. I can't wait to throw my body at Everest and see how it fares. 2 years ago my training consisted of just running 4 miles 5-6 times a week and doing some meager lifting 3-4 times a week. I still did pretty well on Everest as a result, but I can only imagine how I'll do now.

easy cash com

The World Memory Championships are in 2.5 months from now and that is my main focus. Stay tuned....I'll be going over what the whole competition is like and the events that make it up.

TEDx Coconut Grove

Today is the long-awaited TEDx conference in Coconut Grove (for those of you who don't know, Coconut Grove is a subset of Miami). It will be running from noon to 9pm at the Ransom Everglades High School, which is one of the oldest standing HS campuses in Miami - beautiful campus; beautiful auditorium. Read more about it here: TEDxCoconutGrove. I'll be speaking in the second set which runs from 2pm-4pm. My talk will be about my journey to becoming the USA Memory Champion and how I was able to improve my brain health with some simple and easy memory techniques. Should be fun! I did my run through on stage last Sunday and the whole set up looked awesome and the people running the whole thing were doing a smashing job.

My hope is that the talk becomes viral and eventually gets posted on the main TED.com website :) Fingers crossed.

Novartis, Quito

September is World Alzheimer's Month. Around the world, 35 million people and their families are affected by dementia. Think about that... Spread the word. Wear purple. Make a donation. Value your own mind and treat it with the respect it deserves.

I'm off this week to do a whirlwind of events. First up, Ecuador to do a few presentations on memory and Alzheimer's prevention. The events are hosted by Novartis, which if you aren't familiar, is the pharmaceutical company that develops the Exelon patch. The Exelon patch is a transdermal patch that is currently the only FDA approved treatment for symptoms of dementia for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. I'll be speaking to the folks at the Novartis HQ, then to students at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito, and then to the media! It'll be about how to go about improving your memory and the steps you can take to maintain a healthy brain (check out the sweet flyer they made of my face!).

Next, I'll be in New Orleans for the big AARP convention working closely with life'sDHA, a DHA Omega-3 algae supplement company that I work for. That should be fun, as I'll be at their booth doing demos and giving tips on memory every hour on the hour.

After that, possibly LA to tape a show. We'll see if that pans out.....if not, I'll be back in Miami early to start prepping for my TEDx talk the following week. PHEW.

That's all....Oh wait HEY, did you know I'm climbing Everest next March-June? Pleas consider making a donation and support the cause: I WANT TO DONATE!!!

How To Memorize Poetry

You either love it or hate it. Poetry is one of those things that if you love it, it can be pretty easy to go about memorizing. But if you hate it, or just don't connect with a particular piece, it can be downright nasty. Your whole life you've probably approached memorizing poetry by just repeating lines and phrases over and over and over and over and over (and over!) again until it sticks. That definitely works but a). it's extremely inefficient and b). it'll make you want to gouge your eyes out from boredom. Memory techniques are the way to go. Don't believe me? Ask Ed Cooke, UK memory grandmaster. He used them to memorize massive portions of the epic poem "Paradise Lost," a monster of a poem that has 10,000+ individual lines of verse. Ouch. I've also used the same techniques to memorize 50 line poems in 15 minutes (in competition), some easy and fun, some abstract and boring.

There are a few ways to go about memorizing text. The first, is to do it rotely - by pure repetition. If you have the time and you enjoy torture, this is the method for you. But I dont recommend it at all. Because....torture is not fun. It's torture.

The second approach is to use a journey or memory palace to store pieces of the text. Once you've wisened up and decided to use this approach, there's a bit of personal preference that comes into play: how much information should I store at each loci? Each and every word? Groups of words? Lines? Verses? Key words and topics here and there? Opinions may differ given that some people are better at remembering different amounts of things. For this blog post I'm going to share my personal preferences since it has allowed me to be pretty successful at it - I tied the USA record for memorizing the most lines of a poem this past year (given the fact that I actually hate memorizing poetry, text, or lyrics, I'd say that's pretty good; check out my graded papers below).

The first thing you need to do is figure out where you want to store the poem in your mind. That will depend on what you plan to do with the poem once it's memorized. Is it for a school assignment (once it's performed it can be forgotten) or is it for long term use (you want to remember it forever)? If you want to remember it forever I suggest creating a new journey specifically for storing this one poem; a journey that you well never re-use for anything else. If it's something you don't plan on keeping for longer than you have to, you can just use any journey that you have in your arsenal. For those of you who don't know, a journey is any familiar place that you can picture in your mind. These journeys are made up of anchor points or distinct "stops" along a specific path around the journey. The size of your journey (how many anchor points) that you decide to use should depend on the length of the poem and how you plan on compressing groups of words into images. We'll talk about that more later.

I'm going to use a stanza from Shell Silverstein's "One Inch Tall" poem because it's fun and easy to visualize. And that's just the thing...if you're memorizing a poem that you connect with and is easy to understand and picture, then the less images-for-words you need, maybe even just one image per line or half-line. The more abstract the poem gets, the more images-for-words you'll need since larger phrases of words will be more complex to visualize -- you'll need to break it down. Again, this is my approach - me being someone who doesn't find much beauty in lyrical words (I prefer music....sorry!).

So that we're all on the same page, let's all use the same journey to memorize the first few lines of this poem. Our journey will be a path through America. Starting in Miami, then DC, Philly, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Fran, LA, Honolulu. All iconic US cities (with easy to picture "sceneries", right? Miami - beach, DC - the White House, Philly - the Liberty Bell, NYC - the Empire State Building, Boston - a harbor, Chicago - the Sears Tower, Denver - some mountains, San Fran - Lumbard Street, LA - the Hollywood sign, and Honolulu - a volcano). You can remember the journey's path because it's just up the east coast, then across to the west. Got it? GOOD.

Here's the first stanza of the poem:

If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school. The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool. A crumb of cake would be a feast And last you seven days at least, A flea would be a frightening beast If you were one inch tall.

First things first. Re-read the stanza. Dive into it and imagine it being the story of your life. Really try to visualize it. As you read across the words, imagine a movie playing simultaneously in your mind displaying it all. This is what I always do first. It helps me build a basis for what the poem is about and it helps me figure out the structure of the lines, meter, and rhyming scheme. Next, start coming up with images for the words and storing along your journey.

In this particular poem, the lines are kind of long, so I'm going to split them in half. The first thing we want to memorize is:

"If you were only one inch tall,"

We are standing in Miami on the beach (our first anchor point) and we need to picture this phrase happening there. Easy. Actually picture yourself on the beach as if you were only one inch tall! That will only give you the gist of the phrase, so you might add an image for "if," to get deeper into the specific wording. When I see the word if, I imagine the Chateaux d'If from the Count of Monte Cristo movie. So, plop goes the Chateaux d'If on Miami Beach and I am only one inch tall in comparison. To remember the word "only" I might put emphasis on the fact that I am the ONLY person on the beach, no one else in sight. One thing to take note of is the subject of the poem: you. Everything is about you. You just need to be aware of that. If you were only one inch tall. What about the comma? I have pre-set actions for all punctuation. That way, when I see a punctuation mark I immediately have an image for it to throw into the mix. A comma is the action of falling, a period is any type of bloody violence, a semi-colon is the action of mopping the floor, etc. So to remember that there was a comma at the end of the phrase, I would picture my small one inch self falling over next to the Chateaux. Done. Next.

"you'd ride a worm to school."

I'm in DC by the White House (second anchor point). For this, I'm going to picture myself riding a worm up to the White House (which kinda looks like a super fancy school). Period at the end? I need to add violence there. Maybe a sniper takes me out as I approach the front door of the White House.

"The teardrop of a crying ant"

Now at the Liberty Bell, imagine a massive teardrop coming from a crying ant. Simple enough.

"would be your swimming pool."

At the Empire State Building, picture a wooden bee in a swimming pool. Why a wooden bee? To help you remember "would be." It's not the same spelling but it will remind you enough of what it is properly....and it's weird and random, exactly the kind of thing you remember best.

"A crumb of cake would be a feast"

Sometimes you feel confident and you go for a whole line in one image. Imagine being in a harbor (Boston), and picture a crumb of cake being feasted upon by that same wooden bee.

"And last you seven days at least,"

Now at the Sears Tower, we have a pretty difficult line to imagine. So we might want to split it in half.

"And last you"

For "And" and "Or" I have preset images. "And" is a circle and "Or" is a square. I'm at the Sear's Tower standing on a circular platform (representing the "and") and I'm last in line to get into the building, I'm singing "Supaman dat hoe" - hence the "YOUUUUUU". That may not make sense to you, but that's okay. Come up with your own image for "you"....or just be aware that the poem is about you; that might be all you need.

"seven days at least,"

On a mountain in Denver, I'm gonna imagine I have to camp 7 days out in the wilderness AT LEAST, then I fall down the mountain (that's the comma).

"A flea would be a frightening beast"

At Lumbard Street, the bassist from Red Hot Chilli Peppers (his name is Flea) is being stung by that wooden be and he's screaming "a frightening beast!!!" as he runs down the famous winding road.

"If you were one inch tall."

Down to the Hollywood sign in LA, same line as the first, minus the "only" word. Picture the exact same thing as you stand under the sign. Don't forget the period!

Voila. We didn't even need to go to Honolulu! Now try, without scrolling up, to see if you remember all of the images (they don't have to be exact, just roughly what was happening at each anchor point). Some may have been easier to remember the exact words, others may have been difficult (but maybe you still remembered the images). Don't worry. That's okay. Go through it again if you must. The crucial part for me once I've done the encoding of words to images, is to write it down on paper. For some reason, writing it down at this point adds a different dimension of visualization that helps with recall. As I write it down from memory, I'll keep the poem next to me for viewing but I will only use it as a seldom crutch in case I encounter any gaps. Once I've written it down once or twice, the poem is cemented into my mind.

Everyone is different, so experiment a little bit to see what works best for you - memorizing smaller or larger pieces, memorizing key words here and there and then mixing it with a bit of rote repetition, whatever!

Making it verbally fluid from that point on isn't always as easy. Remember, these techniques get information into your memory fast, but doesn't necessarily make the access instantaneous....at least not at first. Once you have it in your brain though, the nice thing is that you can review it as often as you want (just mentally travel through the US!). To make the reciting seamless is where the real practice comes in. You'll have to take what you just stored in your mind and convert into muscle memory. This is something that just takes repetition. As you continue to perform your poem out loud, it will eventually become a single fluid thought, and you'll always have the basic rubrique in your mind in case you stumble.

There you go. That's how the USA Memory Champion memorizes poetry. BAM.

Failed Memory System

I'm teaching a couple sections of a Java programming lab this semester at the University of Miami (where I did my Masters a couple of years ago) and they just re-activated my account from back then. The picture below was sitting on my desktop. It made me laugh because it was an idea I had for a 4-card memory system way back when. The idea was to do Person, Action, Object, Color. Person was the first card, Action was the second, third and fourth card (just the number value) was an Object, then I painted the whole mental scene with a color that was represented by the suit pair combination of those same two cards. Here are what each pair represented:

FYI, that system failed. I never got faster than 55 seconds for a deck of cards with it, so I dropped it. I think it was because I could never really get the hang of visualizing the colors well in my mind. I was pretty annoyed for a good while after because I thought I had discovered an amazing system that was failproof, but apparently I was wrong.

Summer Crush Games

This past weekend I attended the second annual Summer Crush Crossfit Games, which is a Crossfit competition second in size to the Crossfit Games Final. I've been doing Crossfit since early February to train for my Everest climb, but this was my first opportunity to really see what these competitions are about and to see some of the top athletes perform. I also got a chance to support the Crossfit box I work out at, Crossfit Vida. We did pretty darn good. The competition was awesome. It totally inspired me to push myself even harder in everything I do. Some of the things I saw people do were just ridiculous; we're talking some of the fittest people on the planet here, lifting seriously heavy weights, moving their bodies in tiring motions, over and over again - just amazing. What amazed me the most was seeing these super fit guys competing but then seeing some of them look like they were getting completely wrecked by the workout. I just couldn't imagine how hard they must have been working to feel like that. Second amazing thing was watching the women; they kill it just as bad as the guys.

I also got the opportunity to briefly meet this young 13-year old girl named Kate Foster. She's a crossfiter (and gymnast) who made a mind-blowing come back after battling Leukemia. She lost a leg in the process though... Despite that, she still does crossfit, like a badass. I love seeing people succeed after having overcome life-threatening situations. What's more, she's doing things that people told her she would never be able to do again. Please watch the video below to see her contagiously positive attitude towards life. My favorite line is her saying "I'll show you I can." What an inspiration; she totally made my weekend.

I'm itching to do a more extensive blog post about Crossfit for those who aren't convinced or who don't know much about it. It has changed my life and has even improved my memory. More on that later. Pics below:

Alpamayo Video Up!

Finally put together all the pieces. Here is a video from my recent climb. I didn"t summit, hence the lack of summit shots on Alpamayo. But again, it"s all about the journey and the memories. Enjoy...