Against the Clock
A pack of cards, a clock and a room full of silent competitors. How to get faster without getting sloppy.
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Thirteen seconds
A large hall. Rows of tables. At each table there is a competitor with a pack of cards face down in front of them, a stopwatch, and a pair of ear defenders. The room is silent. When the signal comes, every competitor turns over the pack and begins.
This is the speed cards event, one of the most watched at memory championships. The task: look at a shuffled pack of fifty-two cards and learn the order as fast as you can. When you are ready you stop the clock, hand over the pack, and later you must put a second, new pack into the same order. Both the time and the accuracy count.
In recent years the best competitors have got the time for a whole pack below thirteen seconds. That is about a quarter of a second for each card. It sounds impossible, and it would be, if each card needed a new idea. But it does not.
The answer is that nothing new happens at all. Every card is already a fixed picture, and every place is already a fixed place. The competitor is not inventing. They are looking up pictures and putting them in places they have walked a thousand times. The work was done in training, long before the day.
The most important lesson of speed is the least obvious. You do not get faster by trying to go faster. You get faster by finding the one step that is slow, and making it automatic, and then finding the next.
In this lesson you will do exactly that, using ordinary words and pictures instead of cards. You will time yourself, find where the seconds go, and train in short rounds that raise your speed in steps.
Words worth knowing
Say what you think each one means, then open it.
The speed cards event is part of the standard World Memory Championship programme. Records change; 'below thirteen seconds' is the order of magnitude. Our own account.
Finding where the seconds go
Memorising an item has four small steps. Speed comes from making each one smaller.
- Look-up. Turn the item into its fixed picture.
- Build. Make the picture act in a vivid way.
- Place. Put it at the next place on the route.
- Move on. Step to the next item without checking or going back.
| If you are slow at | It is probably because | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Look-up | The fixed pictures are not automatic yet | Flash-card the list until each answer takes no time |
| Building | You are trying to make the picture perfect | Make it good enough: one action and one sense |
| Placing | The route is not automatic | Walk the route in your head, fast, without items |
| Moving on | You go back to check | Trust the picture and go on; check at the end |
How to train
- Accuracy first. Do not time yourself until you can do the task correctly at a slow pace.
- Short rounds. Thirty to sixty seconds, then stop and rest. Many short rounds beat one long one.
- Raise the speed by about a tenth each time. If you make errors, go back.
- Keep a log. Write the time and the number of mistakes. Progress is visible.
- Rest. Sleep is part of training.
smooth is fast.
Now you build
Have a go before you open any answer. A rough attempt teaches you more than a perfect model you only read.
Find the bottleneck
A timed round
The idea
Your training log
Walk the route fast
Drill
Flash cards
Say the answer first, then tap the card.
Quick quiz
The memory challenge
Memory challenge: ten words, sixty seconds
Ten words in sixty seconds. Look-up, build, place, move on. Type them in order.
About six seconds for each. Do not go back.
The list has gone. Type what you remember, one item per line.
Look back
These reach back to earlier rooms. Answer in your head or out loud, then check.
What I can do now
A thought to keep
Which step is your bottleneck? What small drill will you do this week to fix it?