A post by Sarah Robins

While I was in graduate school, a group of psychologists at WashU brought Ben Pridmore to campus. Pridmore had recently won the World Memory Championship and held the record in speed cards, an event where one memorizes the order of a shuffled deck of cards (Ben achieved this in 24.97 seconds; a decade later, the record now stands at 13.96 seconds). Pridmore met with some of us to talk about his memory training—and of course show off his speed cards. He described building memory palaces as the act of creating “an Escher painting in my head.”

Mnemonics have fascinated me ever since.