Naked Science Memory Course - Copyright Michael Curtis 2009
Ben Pridmore and the Major System and his system
Who is Ben Pridmore?
Ben Pridmore is, among other things, a famous rapid memoriser. He can memorise a pack of cards in under 30 seconds. That is fast and not many memory competitors can do it in under a minute even.
Is Ben Pridmore a genius if he is memorising so quickly?
Ben Pridmore states that anybody could do the things which he does. He claims that his memory techniques are based on a very old memory technique method known as the 'Major System'. I think it is fair to say that he is a very clever chap because his peers consider him to be a great at what he does.
So is he just using the Major System?
No. The Major System is a method for replacing hard-to-learn items with easy-to-imagine images in easy-to-imagine scenes. By remembering the often silly mental story, one remembers the hard-to-learn items in sequence order. While, to a large extent, this is what Ben does, he has modified the Major System so that it is perhaps more accurate to say that he is using a different system.
The Major System would prefer to present a card like the Ace of Spades as a 'sud' or a person you know named 'Sid'. The 'S' of either word is a hint that the card is a Spade card: S = Spade. The 'D' sound at the end of either word is a Major System standard rule that D=1 . Well, an Ace is the first card. So it is a 1. It requires a 'D' sound.
So a person could practise the ability to see their friend Sid in a story if the card they see in the pack is the Ace of Spades. Is it the 3rd card in the pack or the 10th card in the pack? The mental story involving Sid would also involve some image which represents position in the pack. The memoriser revisits these standard positional images and recalls what was going on at that mental place. If Sid is there then the Ace of Spades occurs there.
Ben was interested in using one image to represent two cards rather than a mere one card. Other memory competitors had not invested the time in such a huge library of mental images. When Ben started to use his system, he had an immediate advantage over other competitors. Instead of memorising 52 cards as 52 images , he was now memorising 52 cards as half that number of images: 26. So, his mental stories were half the size and less demanding in that sense.
In order to be inspired the approximately 2700 images of his big sytem, Ben used not just consonant sounds but vowel sounds too. This is a departure from the Major System because it only used consonants and ignores the sounds 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o' and 'u' as well as other vowel-related sounds such as 'oo' and 'ee'. Ben combined a consonant and a vowel-related sound and a consonant to represent two cards.
You can read more about how he represents cards: the Ben system.
You can (if it is online still) read more about how he represents numbers: the Ben simple system.
You can read how Ben bypasses the situation where consonants and vowls spell non-English words he swaps it for a vaguely similar sounding word..
The BBC made a video of Ben's method.
I am not sure that Ben actually chose the names of both of his systems. I think that people started using the term 'Ben System' and that was that, as they say.
Where can I find out more about Ben Pridmore?
Well, he appears on television in both documentaries and in entertainment shows. eg. TV series 'The Mentalists'. His blog Zoomy's Thing regularly lists what he has been up to vis-a-vis tv and radio appearances and would-be appearances.
He even achieved an interview with Men's Health magazine. So hats off to him. AND he has a wikipedia entry.
What's all this about hats?
Ben likes hats. OK?!
Is the Major System worth looking at?
Yes, it is a really good memory system. I hesitate to point you towards it when there are other systems which are a lot like it but different and very good too. But you would have to be Ronald McCrazyTrousers to suggest that the Major System is not still, after 100s of years, a great system.
Extra from Ben Pridmore's blog (1)
Extra from Ben Pridmore's blog (2)
Tips from Ben Pridmore who can memorise a pack in about half a minute.