Peg

The gambler's hack

The peg system is a trick that boosts your recall by linking numbers to specific images. It helps magicians and memory masters achieve their incredible feats and is even used by professional gamblers to keep track of cards in a deck, giving them a winning edge. Struggling to remember your pin number? Dates in History? Birthdays for friends? You need Peg System!

Activity

Let's start by finding some important numerical data to memorise. This must be information that you don't already know. Here are a few examples:

Easy: The house number of 5 friends
Medium: Birthdays of 5 friends or family (in the format 26/05 for the 26th May)
Hard: A bank card number (use the example below if you don't have one)

Once you have the data, practice turning it into peg images. Here's a final example as a guide:

Bank Card: 5425 2386 3097 9128

Turn the number into pairs of digits: 54 25 23 86 30 97 91 28

Then, apply the system, using these rules and adding vowels in between to make up the words:

So: 54 = FiR / 25 = kNiFe / 23 = gNoMe / 86 = SHiP / 30 = MoSS / 97 = GoaT / 91 = JaiL / 28 = NaCHo

You see a Fir tree, with a Knife sticking out of it. Who's done this? An evil Gnome, who's escaped on his Ship. He travels home to his land of Moss, where he is keeping a Goat locked in a Jail, feeding it only Nachos.

You'll remember the strange story easily, all you need to do now is decode it using the system. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and see if you can do it!

Here are all the two-digit codes for you to use:

Challenge:

Can you decode the story, using the system?

Write it down and check back to the top to see if you were right.

You see a Fir tree, with a Knife sticking from it. Who's is it? An evil Gnome, who's escaped on his Ship. He travels home to his land of Moss, where he is keeping a Goat locked in a Jail, feeding it only Nachos.