Memory palace
Most people can repeat back about seven digits, give or take two (Miller, 1956), and later work puts the true limit nearer four chunks (Cowan, 2001). That limit can be worked around. After more than 230 hours of practice, one student in a 1980 study went from 7 digits to 79 (Ericsson, Chase and Faloon). His raw memory didn't change. He learned to group the digits into running times he already knew.
Digit span measures the limit. The word list is where you practise getting past it, with the method of loci explained below the game.
Digits flash one a second. When they stop, type them back in order. Get it right and the next sequence is one longer; miss twice in a row and the round ends. It starts at 3.
- Best
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- Streak
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Usually two to four minutes
Longest span over time
Loading your rounds…
The memory palace, in four steps
The story goes that the poet Simonides was dining at a nobleman's house when he was called outside, and the roof fell in behind him. The bodies were past recognising, but he could name every guest by remembering where each one had sat. Cicero tells it in De Oratore as the start of the art of memory: places hold things in order.
It still works. People who win memory championships turn out not to be cleverer or to have unusual brains. They use a spatial strategy like this one (Maguire and others, 2003). And it can be learned: in one study, beginners who practised it for 30 minutes a day over 40 days started to show brain connection patterns like the champions'. The closer they came, the more their memory improved, with gains still there four months later (Dresler and others, 2017).
- 1
Pick a route you know cold
Your home, your walk to work, a childhood house. Choose ten places along it, in the order you pass them: the gate, the front door, the shoe rack. The route has to be effortless, because it carries everything else.
- 2
Make each item into a picture
Words like anchor or volcano are easy. For an abstract word, picture something that sounds like it or stands for it. Make the picture big, strange, moving or funny. Ordinary images slide off.
- 3
Put each picture at a place
Walk the route in your head and leave one picture at each place, interacting with it: an anchor smashing through the gate, a volcano erupting out of the shoe rack. With more items than places, put two or three at each.
- 4
Walk the route to recall
To get the list back, walk the same route and look at each place. The pictures are waiting there, already in order. A blank place tells you exactly which item you lost.
Build your palace
Name ten places along your route, in order. They stay in this browser. Once all ten are named, the word list shows each word at its place while you study and labels the recall boxes with them. Use the same route every time. Walking it gets faster with practice.