# Letter Pairs: images, sentences and audio (Tutorial)



## Zane_C (Feb 15, 2013)

This video focuses on the 3 popular memory methods involving letter pairs; images, sentences and audio. I was nearly going to split this into 3 videos, but I decided not to, because I see this as a descriptive overview of letter pairs, rather than a series of in-depth tutorials worth a video each.






*Key parts:*
0:45 - Letter pair images
3:35 - Sentences
6:41 - Audio pairs

*Written version* (essentially a transcript):
_Intro:_ This video aims to give you insights into how you can use letters to memorise the Rubik’s cube. The memory methods described here are by no means the only ways of using letters, but they’re certainly among the most popular. 

If you’ve gotten this far, I imagine you already have a lettering scheme, if you don’t, see speffz for an example lettering scheme. Letter pairs are convenient for any blindfold method, especially M2 and 3-cycles. With M2, pairs allow you to easily keep track of the M-slice. And as for 3-cycles, pairs make it easy to differentiate between each 3-cycle, since each 3-cycle can be represented by a single pair. 

*Letter pair images:*
Letter pair images work by combining 2 letters to make a single image (eg. C+T = ‘*c*a*t*’).
It’s important to emphasise that these are called letter pair images for a reason. Even though ‘cat’ is in itself a word, you need to use your imagination to actually picture a cat. The way this is done is typically by imagining yourself walking in someplace you’re very familiar with, such as where you live. So you might imagine yourself opening your fridge or walking into your bedroom and there’s a cat. 

But images can go further much than that. You can drastically condense your memo by interacting 2 or more images in the one location. So if your letters were C+T and B+L, the images could be ‘*c*a*t*’ and ‘*bl*ood’ respectively. Rather than imagining these 2 images independent of each other, you can combine 'cat' and 'blood' into the one entity by imagining a cat bleeding to death. If you have a pet cat, you will probably find it useful to imagine your own cat bleeding to death, because the more unpleasant/profane your imagination is, the easier it is to remember. So if you want to use images, it may help if you make your imagination as gory, dirty and offensive as possible.

You can either derive images on the spot, or you can memorise a list of images that account for every possible combination of letters in your lettering scheme (see list of letter pairs images). Even if you don’t set off to memorise a list of letter pair images, you will find that after a while of deriving images on the spot, you’ll begin to subconsciously create and memorise your own list. Letter pair images are a very powerful system, and if later on you decide to do multi BLD or big cubes BLD, you will be glad to know letter pair images. 

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*Sentences:*
You can also pair letters to make sentences. This is done by pairing letters into words, names or sounds, and then linking them together to make a relatively coherent sentence.

Example: TH PL VC WA CK = *Th*e *pl*ant *v*a*c*uum *wa*nts *c*a*k*e. 
Even though there’s no such thing as a ‘plant vacuum’, this sentence has correct grammar and flows quite nicely. Sentences like these are generally easy to remember, the more difficult part is creating the sentences in the first place. 

In addition to using the letters in your memo to derive your sentence, you can also add ‘_filler_’ words. These aren’t actually part of your memo, the purpose of these fillers is to make the sentence flow nicer and be easier to construct. 

Here’s an example with fillers: UA EN TF DW = The *u*n*a*rmed *en*velope *t*rans*f*ormed into a *dw*arf.

Fillers that you could use may include words such as; ‘the’, ‘then’, ‘and’, ‘with’, and of course, many others (including verbs).

A problem you may encounter with fillers is having trouble differentiating between fillers and the words that actually contain the letters from your memo. But over time, this will become less of an issue and it will become very easy to tell which words are fillers and which ones aren’t.

There are many people who have gotten really fast with sentences. This method has became increasingly popular over the years, and it is certainly a method worth investigating. Since I'm a beginner when it comes to sentences and have very little experience with this method, I hope I don't get too much criticism and face palms from the sentence experts XD. (feel free to do so, hahaha)

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*Audio pairs:*
Audio pairs are typically used for memorising the corners, but some find them just as effective for memorising the edges. This method falls into the category of an auditory method, that is, you solely remember how the memo sounds, rather than relying on images, visual or some kind of coherent structure like a sentence.

The way to use audio pairs is by pairing 2 letters together to make a *one syllable* sound, word or name. For example, you could memorise the letters I and J as simply ‘ij’ - which would be pronounced as if it was spelt ‘idge’. Ultimately, you will need to remember a string of jumbled sounds and words. It might seem stupid trying memorise letters in this way, because ‘ij’ doesn’t make sense, and nonsensical things are usually more difficult to remember. But this doesn’t matter with audio pairs, because... 

This memory method takes advantage of a unique function of the brain that aids humans with processing sounds, it’s called echoic memory (also known as the auditory loop). You would’ve noticed that when you hear something, or someone says something to you, you can play the voice or sound back to yourself in your head. This can be particularly helpful if you didn’t process what someone said the first time, and instead of asking them to say it again, you can just play it back to yourself. Echoic memory is something we all have, and with it we can memorise an unordered sequence of sounds and words.

You won’t always be able to make a sound out of only 2 letters. The example I used for 'I' and 'J' can be memorised as simply ‘ij’, but what about other pairs such as V+L? 

*2 consonants:*
Example pair: V+L
Whenever you have 2 consonants, you can add any vowel in-between them to produce an audible sound. Just use whatever comes to mind first, so if you were to use ‘e’ as the vowel in the above example, the sound will simply be ‘*v*e*l*’. 

*1 consonant + 1 vowel:*
If the pair consists of 1 consonant and 1 vowel, you will always be able to make a sound by using only the 2 letters. For example:

D+E = ‘de’ (could be pronounced as 'dee')
A+K=’ak’ (could be pronounced as ‘ache’) 

*2 vowels:*
If you have 2 vowels in the pair, it's still possible to make a sound from just the 2 letters. 2 vowels can be a problem though, because monosyllable sounds can be difficult to make, and certain pairs may sound alike. You can solve this by coming up with your own unique sound or word specific to the awkward pair, or by making some sort of mental note, such as a using your visual memory as well. 

_Some examples involving 2 vowels:_
AE = 'ae' (pronounced as 'ay' or 'eh')
OU... could be pronounced as 'ooh' 
AI... could be pronounced as 'eye'

_Example corner memo:_
IE, WF, MR, SU = ‘I wof more sue’.

With a little practice, audio pairs can be an effortless method. You don’t need to memorise a list of audio pairs, and you don’t even need to be good at deriving words on the spot. You just randomly throw in a vowel whenever you have 2 consonants in a pair. 

Despite audio pairs being very simple, there is somewhat of a catch though - echoic memory is only short term, so if you’re going to use audio pairs to memorise the corners, you should definitely be memorising the corners last, then solving them first. And likewise if you use audio pairs to memorise the edges.

*Closing notes:*
If you’re still searching for that sweet memory system that’s just right for you, be persistent. You may need to have a taste of the entire spectrum of memory methods before you find the system that works best for you. Remember to be patient, and experiment with various memory methods, and different combinations of memory methods. And as I too often say - everyone has the potential to memorise really fast, you just need to find the right memory system.


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## omer (Feb 15, 2013)

I knew most of what you said, it still helped me with some stuff. Great tutorial as always, thanks


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## Sessinator (Feb 28, 2013)

This tutorial does a great job of going over the different methods in a relatively short amount of time. It seems the way I do edges is pretty counter-intuitive since I execute edges first yet memo them first instead of last (with audio). I use visual/tapping for corners which, in some easy cases, can be really fast, but in most cases when the visual memo isn't as nice I really get slowed down or forget what I memorized. After watching this I implemented a letter system for my corners to try letter pair images. It's been slower for me to do corners this way since I just started, but I'm willing to try it out to see if it will pay off in the long run!


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