Single Digit Acrostics

Single Digit Acrostics

Acrostics, as we read earlier, are phrases or sentences where you are using a memorable phrase to prompt you the concept which you really want to remmember. So, for instance, a simple sentence might contain a prompt of the planets of the solar system;

This is an acrostic for memorising the planets and the dwarf planets:

Murky conVention's Efforts Mar *Series;

Jury Set yoUr Next *Planet *Chart *Erratically.

Taking the first prominent letter of each word of that sentence:

M=Mercury [Murky], V=Venus [conVention], E=Earth [Efforts], M=Mars, 'Series' sounds like Ceres; J=Jupiter, S=Saturn, U=Uranus, N=Neptune, P=Pluto, Ch=Charon, Eris [formerly UB313]

[I used an asterisk in places to emphasise the dwarf planets' words.]

In 2006, a committee of astronomers elected that Pluto should not be classified as a planet. They considered how there are dwarf planets such as dwarf planet UB313 also known as Eris; and Pluto has certain similarities with that 'dwarf planet' classification rather than 'planet' classification. My acrostic sentence tries to mention the context of how the list of planets became what it currently is.

The acrostic has a lot of words in it but I claim that it is a less challenging task to learn it than it is to rote learn the planets.

So we see that we can take hard-to-learn sequences and make them more memorable. An application of that principle is that sequences of digits may be learned by using acrostics; this is looked at next.

Single Digits 0 to 9

Acrostics may be used to memorise a sequence of digits.

You need to have previously learned a code system where letters equate to digits; then, the first letter of each word in a sentence can be converted into a digit.

Here is a single digit code system followed by an example of it being used:

Digit	Words starting with ...
0	Ch  P  Ph  Sh  Th  X  Y  Z
1	D
2	B  E
3	C  H  K  Q
4	I  L  T
5	M  N
6	O  R
7	J  S
8	G  U  V  W
9	A  F

'Ch' equates with the digit 0; also, 'P' equates with 0, and so does 'Ph' and 'Sh' and the other arrangements there.

So, a word like Showman would be seen as being 'Sh' followed by some other letters. In the table, 'Sh' = 0; so the digit 0 would be figured out.

A phrase like 'Tennis Player' would have the 'T' of 'Tennis' and the 'P' of 'Player' selected since they come first in each word. In the table, you see that the 'T' indicates a 4 and that the 'P' indicates a '0'. So, 'Tennis Player' can be translated into a 4 followed by a 0: 40.

The table shows that D = 1 ; so two words using 'D' would mean 11. eg. 'Drop Down' or 'Dave Davis' or 'D-Day'.

A sentence of several words could symbolise a number of many digits. A four word sentence could become the 4 digits of someone's PIN number. So, instead of memorising a 4-digit number, you would memorise a sentence and then turn it into its acrostic digits. eg. "What Is My PIN?" has words beginning with W, I, M and P: and the table matches 'W' with 8, 'I' with 4, 'M' with 5 and 'P' with 1; therefore, the 4-digit PIN is: 8451.

1066 is the year that the Norman French's king, after having been denied the throne, crossed the English Channel and took over England. In other words: 'Denied THrone, Overthrew Royals'. D of 'Denied'='1', TH of 'Throne'=0, O of 'Overthrew'=6, R of 'Royals'=6. Thus, a 4-word phrase may contain the historical year in which its details happened! I had to look for surrounding information of the 1066 event so that I could create a suitable sentence for it which uses words that form 1066.

I still prefer knowing 1066 off-by-heart rather than to know an acrostic. However, in situations such as cramming for an exam or a simplified introduction to a subject, a memory technique such as an acrostic may be useful.

What number could this line be describing?

Circumference divisor is diameter; method: Archimedes' exhaustion; Raven: Mike Keith mnemonics.

Trivia Poetry and Prose

Acrostics may be used to memorise tables of data. You can dress up dull data as a poem or a paragraph of text.

As an example, here is a summary of the 1930 World Cup:

FM41 Football makes life delightful

AF10 A football will change

CM30 Common men's hard personas:

CF10 Cheering footballers' deft shots

AM63 And making referee hisses

AC31 After crazy harsh decisions

YB21 Young boys enjoy football

YB40 Young boys like playing;

BB40 Before breakfast, taking penalties

RP31 Running past kicking defenders

UP10 Undoing planned defence positions

UR40 Until real life pesters

UB30 Umpteen boys have played

UP30 Under pelting hail showers

PB10 Preferring bad weather chill

AU61 Above usual routine drudgery

UY61 Until youths reach adulthood

UA42 Until adult life beckons

The first letters of words indicate teams or results. 'Football Makes Life Delightful' is 'FMLD' where the last two letters are treated as digits (see conversion table above) so that L=4 and D=1.

So FMLD is FM41: France [F] played Mexico [M] and the score was 4 - 1 . http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/edition=1/results/index.html may be consulted for 1930 statistics.

I decided that D=1 would be too limiting for me since many scores involve '1' in the result; so I modified my usual system so that 8 or 9 is treated as 1 also. So a 'W' or an 'A', for instance, are interpreted as a 1. Sometimes, depending on the project, I will modify the basic letter-into-digit system. But if a score has an 8 or a 9 in it then I need to have good rote memory to recall that a 'W', in that case, means an 8 and not a 1 !!