Let's get right to the June snippets, shall we?

• My first snippet, instead of being a link, concerns Grey Matters itself. Take a look over in the rightmost column, and you'll notice some major changes. Both the feed and downloads sections are gone, replaced with links to the new Downloads page (divided up into free and commercial downloads) and Feeds/Social Links page. Having these on individual pages allowed me to greatly expand those pages, while also making them easier to maintain.

Also note that my Twitter Feed has been added. If you're on Twitter, please follow me!

• For those of you who download and use the MAGIC Magazine Database, which currently only has issues from September 1991 to October 2009, I've posted data for November 2009 up through June 2010 here (and will continue to add new issues as they come out) in CSV format.

• If you're learning the Day of the Week For Any Date feat, there's a great new way to train for it, and it's free! Magnus Bodin, from Sweden, has developed a large amount of mp3 training files for this feat. In each individual file, a date is given, then there's a pause, then the day of the week on which that date falls is stated (the voice is computer generated, BTW).

The files are arranged in “albums” of 1,000 mp3 files. You can get the albums with 8-, 11-, 15-, 20-, and 30-second pauses, as well as in day/month/year order or month/day/year order. Living in Vegas, I've found it's handy to practice with both formats, as it's not unusual to run across people from all over the world.

This is a great tool, as you can put these files in your mp3 player or mobile device, set the device to shuffle the order in which the mp3s play, and practice working your way from the 30-second delay album down to the 8-second delay album.

Update (June 14, 2010): Magnus Bodin has just updated the files with the following changes:

1. Re-generated all files with a new algorithm to ensure that the dates are more well spread out.
2. All DMY and MDY-dates are now different, so for those of you who mix these, you will have more different dates, hopefully.
3. The inhalation pause is decreased from 5 to 4 seconds.
4. More "elite"-files provided for you speedy ones; there is now sets with a pause-length of 7,6,5,4 and even 3 seconds!
5. Now all sets contain exactly 1000 files, and not "approximately 1000".

If you have any "glitch-sounding" files in your downloads, you should definitively download the new sets.

• I've talked about learning languages before, which is perhaps the ultimate memory feat. If you're truly interested in learning a language, I suggest checking out the Fluent In 3 Months blog. At that blog, you'll learn effective attitudes and approaches to learning a new language that can help you learn it quickly and easily.

• While I'm on the topic of learning a foreign language, check out Livemocha, where you can practice your skills by talking to native speakers of that language! Another fun language-learning approach is this Talking Cards game, where a regular deck of playing cards is shuffled, and then depending on which cards turn up, you have to describe or answer something in the language you're learning.

• For those of you who enjoy magic squares, check out this attention-getting presentation for a magic square! A number is given, and then the performer proceeds to write another number down on a post-it note, which is then stuck to the wall. The performer then writes another number and another number until 16 numbers in all have been written and stuck to the wall. The performer then proceeds to move the numbers around on the wall and finishes with them arranged in a magic square!

I like this approach, as it makes the creation of the magic square as fun as the revelations of the patterns are amazing! Also, if you already do a version of the magic square, such as this one, it's not difficult to adapt to this presentation.

• I'll wrap this edition of snippets with some thoughts from xkcd fans. If you've ever wondered what this particular group of geeks thinks would be cool to learn and/or memorize, you've got your answer. It's interesting how many of the things listed there are already taught here on Grey Matters.
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Answers to last Sunday's puzzle:

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid:

Last Thursday, I received the new Barrie Richardson DVDs in the mail, and I've been spending much time since, in order to bring you this review.

Even before these DVDs were released, there were several remarks about Barrie's performance just based on L&L's preview:


The best response to these concerns came from Steve Pellegrino's sadly-missing (at this writing) Mentalist Magazine, in his article New Barrie Richardson DVDs: Pre-Review (link is cached, be patient):

If ever there was a set of L&L DVDs that are going to create a divide – this is the set! So many people are familiar with Barrie’s wonderful books and are anxious to see the material come to life – if they already haven’t started performing the material themselves.

Mentioning the up-coming release to several close friends, most had the same reaction and that was Barrie isn’t the most dynamic performer. And that is true. Here’s one quote from a magic forum:

He is very boring to watch though. I only like mentalism when it’s fast, direct, and impossible.

And this is where the divide takes place. The material on the DVDs is great. He is an incredible thinker and the material is worthy to be in any mentalist’s repertoire. But Barrie’s presentations tend to be slow. So when buying these you need to know why you’re buying these.

Are you buying these to be entertained?

Are you buying these to potentially add new material to your act?

Let me ask you a couple of other questions.

Are you the type of a performer who is looking to have everything handed to them and all you have to do is learn the script?

Are you the type of performer who is 100% sure about their onstage character and prefers to write their own presentations?

If you’re an amateur, just looking to be entertained with some new DVDs, you will be disappointed. If you’re a working pro that can see past the presentation on the DVD and envision their own take on it, then you will benefit from these many times over.

It's Sunday, and that means it's time for the last of Werner Miller's devious magic square puzzles!

I'd like to thank Werner Miller publicly for very generously devising these puzzles, and letting me share them with you. Next Sunday, Grey Matters will return to its regular blog posts, and the answer to this puzzle will appear at the end.

For those who are new, here are the basic rules of the puzzle:

You're given the same set of 4 starting numbers grouped together in similar locations in a 3 by 3, 4 by 4, and 5 by 5 grids. The object is to fill out the grids with other numbers in such a way that the following conditions are satisfied when the grid is completed:

1) Only positive whole numbers are used.

2) No number is duplicated in a single grid (the same number may be used once in each of the 3 grids, however).

3) Each row, each column, and both diagonals of a single grid must total the same sum. All 3 grids in a puzzle, however, are not required to have the same sum (and usually won't). In other words, each grid must be a magic square, but all 3 grids do not have to have the same magic square total.

4) Puzzles will be posted here each Sunday, with the answers to a given puzzle being made available the following Sunday.

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid:


Can you get the answers to these magic square puzzles? If you can solve it before next Sunday, let me know in the comments! You can either describe your solution there, as best as you can, or link to a graphic of your solution.
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Answers to last Sunday's puzzle:

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid:

Scam School has taught some great variations of Nim in the past: Nim (with matches), Advanced Nim (with coins), and 31 (with cards). What happens when Grey Matters meets Scam School? Naturally, we get rid of the objects, and make Nim a completely mental game!

To be fair, I didn't create this. The earliest reference I can find to Calendar Nim is this 1981 classroom guide, which includes a computer program that plays the game. I'm sure the game goes back much further than this, but I'm unable to find any references before that (If you have any such references, please leave a note about them in the comments!).

Back in March, I e-mailed Brian Brushwood with this scam, and he's made it the focus of this week's episode, along with a 1-100 version submitted by Lee Blackburn (Lee, if you'd like me to add a link to your site/blog/twitter/etc, send me the link!). Here is the episode itself:



Calendar Nim was also written up in the May 1999 issue of MAGIC Magazine as Y2 Kon in Bob Farmer's Flim-Flam column. Shortly after that, Mark Farrar created a simple online Javascript version of the game. The computer will always win in this version, so it's a good way to feel the frustration of being the mark.

BONUS SCAM: Not mentioned in the video is the fact that you can also do Calendar Nim backwards, starting on December 31st, and trying to be the first to land on January 1st. The same rules are in place: You can change the month or the date, but not both, and you can't use any fake dates. This version was also written up by Bob Farmer, in the June 1999 issue of MAGIC Magazine.

Strangely, this is actually easier than the forward version. The key dates are as follows: Dec. 12th, Nov. 11th, Oct. 10th, Sep. 9th, Aug. 8th, July 7th, June 6th, May 5th, April 4th, March 3rd, Feb. 2nd, and Jan. 1st. Notice that the key dates are simply the month numbers themselves (December is the 12th month, so the 12th is your key date for December, and so on).

Mark Farrar also created an online version of the backwards game, as well. Again, the computer is going to win this version, so prepare to lose this one, as well.

The 1-100 version of the scam also appears in The Chrysalis of a Polymath, as in the mental “giveaway” chapter, which has other great feats you can perform for, and teach to, other people.

I talk a lot about memory and mnemonics on here, but where do you go to find specific mnemonics? In this post, I'll share some great (and free!) online resources where you can find mnemonics for just about anything!

Mnemonic Look-up Sites

These are great sites for established mnemonics:

• Amanda's Mnemonics Page (Backup link) – Alas, this once great site exists only in the web archive now, but the mnemonics still work!

• Forget Knot – There are fewer mnemonics on this site that many of the others, but it's still a good resource.

• Medical Mnemonics – Studying medicine? Here is the single best source for medical mnemonics, including the more obscure ones.

• Mnemonic Device.EU – This is an excellent site: cleanly designed, and the mnemonics are easy to get to, and even to submit.

• Mnemonic Devices – This site, which offers some mnemonics not common to many of the others, is also available in Dutch, French, German, and Spanish!

• Mnemonic Dictionary – This is a site focused exclusively on mnemonics for vocabulary words. The mnemonics are usually to help remember the meanings of the words, but you can also find the occasional spelling and usage mnemonics, as well.

• Mnemonics/Memoria Technica – Sure, it's an old-fashioned frame-based site, but it offers direct access to categories, and many of the mnemonics are illustrated, where needed.

• My Dear Aunt Sally – This site, whose name comes from a mnemonic for the order of mathematical operations, is set up as a search engine. It also enables you to easily add your own mnemonics.

• Project HappyChild Mnemonics – This is a small, but useful collection of the more common mnemonics.

• Think-a-Link – Think-a-Link is a social mnemonic site that allows you to submit your own mnemonics, as well as rate those of others!

• Wikipedia Mnemonics – As with all things Wikipedia, this is a growing collection of mnemonics, and a good place to look for some of the more obscure ones. It also has the unusual feature that the mnemonics themselves are listed, as opposed to what their subject matter.

Mnemonic Generators

Sometimes, there are no established mnemonics for what you want to remember (for example, this blog post). That's where these handy mnemonic-creation tools can come in handy:

• Chaucery Fun Mnemonic Generator – The generates mnemonics for 4-digit numbers only, mainly using the number of letters in a word as a reminder, such as “they fight american lobster” (4 letters, then 5 letters, then 8 letters, then 7 letters) for 4587. Sometimes, they use words like “nun” (none) or “not” (naught) for 0, and “solo” or “lone“ for 1.

• JogLab – Here's a great tool for automatically generating acrostic mnemonics with up to 14 letters (and more, if you break up the required letter sets. Here's a video that gives you the basic idea of JogLab:


• Mnemonicizer: The Mnemonic Device Device – NASA posted this simple and free tool to help people develop their own original acrostic mnemonics. It's more basic than JogLab (above), but still quite useful.

• PhoneSpell – Trying to remember someone's phone number? Put it in here, and see what, if anything your phone number spells!

• Rememberg – Like the Chaucery Fun Mnemonic Generator above, this one helps you remember numbers. Rememberg has two advantages though: It can handle more than just 4-digit numbers, and it generates the mnemonics in both the “count” system (again, like the Chaucery Fun Mnemonic Generator), and the Peg/Major System!

• Spacefem's Mnemonics Making Page – The simplest of the acrostic mnemonic generators in this post, it simply asks you to enter letters required, and then generate random, yet gramatically correct, sentences. For example, entering PiGuy yielded “Plaid Igloos Grow Ubiquitous Yolks”, “Pristine Islands Grab Unintelligent Yaks”, and many others.

It's Sunday, and that means it's time for another of Werner Miller's devious magic square puzzles!

For those who are new, here are the basic rules of the puzzle:

You're given the same set of 4 starting numbers grouped together in similar locations in a 3 by 3, 4 by 4, and 5 by 5 grids. The object is to fill out the grids with other numbers in such a way that the following conditions are satisfied when the grid is completed:

1) Only positive whole numbers are used.

2) No number is duplicated in a single grid (the same number may be used once in each of the 3 grids, however).

3) Each row, each column, and both diagonals of a single grid must total the same sum. All 3 grids in a puzzle, however, are not required to have the same sum (and usually won't). In other words, each grid must be a magic square, but all 3 grids do not have to have the same magic square total.

4) Puzzles will be posted here each Sunday, with the answers to a given puzzle being made available the following Sunday.

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid:


Can you get the answers to these magic square puzzles? If you can solve it before next Sunday, let me know in the comments! You can either describe your solution there, as best as you can, or link to a graphic of your solution.
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Answers to last Sunday's puzzle:

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid:

For sometime now, I've been wanting to write a post on one of my major pet peeves: The old argument about memorization vs. understanding.

Let's start with the critics of memorization. Lisa VanDamme's article The Real Math Magic: Understanding vs Memorizing, while focused on mathematics, is typical of the arguments of understanding as opposed to memorization.

First, too many take “memorization” to mean simply rote memorization – just repeating things over and over again until your memory retains them. If this is what is truly being argued against, then I'll give the opposition their due.

However, between techniques like mnemonics, spiral learning, spaced repetition, and more, the techniques are much richer than simply repeating things to memorize them.

We've established that the techniques are richer than most people believe, but what about the benefits of memorizing? It's a little political, but Michael Knox Beran's article In Defense of Memorization does discuss the benefits of the classic form of scholastic memorization. Why Memorization Helps Kids to Learn, by Dr. Rick Bavaria, sums up the benefits of memorization more succinctly and directly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for the elimination of understanding. One of my favorite sites, as regular readers know, is BetterExplained.com, where clarity of understanding is their goal. Indeed, their post A Gentle Introduction To Learning Calculus not only clearly explains the basis of calculus, but makes a good argument that calculus should be taught earlier, not later.

Dan Meyer, while arguing that math class needs a makeover, actually discusses exactly how to overcome the impediments to understanding that most students have:


When you boil the arguments down, it comes down to the fact that memorization and understanding should work together in learning. In talking about how to get users to RTFM, the Passionate Users Blog makes an interesting point: the more you can get someone to understand something, the required memory work decreases.

Note also, that the graph at the above article runs from “High” to “Low”, not “Everything” to “Nothing”. In other words, there will always be a need for some memorization, regardless of your level of understanding. For example, since mental models are rarely perfect, there will usually be a need to memorize the exceptions to the rules.

What are your thoughts and experiences on the classic memorization vs. understanding argument?

Time for another one of Werner Miller's devious magic square puzzles!

For those who are new, here are the basic rules of the puzzle:

You're given the same set of 4 starting numbers grouped together in similar locations in a 3 by 3, 4 by 4, and 5 by 5 grids. The object is to fill out the grids with other numbers in such a way that the following conditions are satisfied when the grid is completed:

1) Only positive whole numbers are used.

2) No number is duplicated in a single grid (the same number may be used once in each of the 3 grids, however).

3) Each row, each column, and both diagonals of a single grid must total the same sum. All 3 grids in a puzzle, however, are not required to have the same sum (and usually won't). In other words, each grid must be a magic square, but all 3 grids do not have to have the same magic square total.

4) Puzzles will be posted here each Sunday, with the answers to a given puzzle being made available the following Sunday.

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid:


Can you get the answers to these magic square puzzles? If you can solve it before next Sunday, let me know in the comments! You can either describe your solution there, as best as you can, or link to a graphic of your solution.
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Answers to last Sunday's puzzle:

3 by 3 grid:


4 by 4 grid:


5 by 5 grid: