# Episode of "a Millions Ways to Live" with Marcin Maskow Kowalczyk



## pjk (Aug 10, 2015)

I received this email today:


> Hello,
> My name is Luke Sniewski and I'm the creator and host of an international documentary web series called Million Ways to Live. We've been traveling around the world filming the unique ways that people find health and happiness. We don't think there is a single answer for health and happiness, so we highlight the diversity of the world.
> 
> We recently filmed an episode about the multiple world record holder in blindfolded speed cubing, Marcin Maskow Kowalczyk, that we think you audience would love and showcases the incredible things you can do when you train your memory. Hopefully after watching the quick episode you’ll agree.
> ...


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## OLLiver (Aug 10, 2015)

finally an interview with Marcin in a language I can understand!
He is an inspiration


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## joshsailscga (Aug 10, 2015)

Really cool insight into the king of 3BLD 
I don't know much about blind, so can any good BLDers verify, do other people have such a large wordbank, or is that one more thing that puts Marcin so far ahead in this field?


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## cmhardw (Aug 10, 2015)

Great video! It's neat to learn how much work Marcin puts into his cubing! You are an inspiration many times over!


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## NeilH (Aug 10, 2015)

Awesome!


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## Dene (Aug 10, 2015)

Dude I totally saw a New Zealand reference in there. Represent.

Also cool interview.


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## rubikmaster (Aug 10, 2015)

Nice! Always love seeing interviews with him.


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## CyanSandwich (Aug 10, 2015)

Dene said:


> Dude I totally saw a New Zealand reference in there. Represent.


Yeah! Same.

Cool video. 3:38-3:49 is interesting. I could never do that.


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## TheCoolMinxer (Aug 10, 2015)

Hey cool! An interview with one of my fav cubers


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## tseitsei (Aug 10, 2015)

joshsailscga said:


> Really cool insight into the king of 3BLD
> I don't know much about blind, so can any good BLDers verify, do other people have such a large wordbank, or is that one more thing that puts Marcin so far ahead in this field?



Well a 1000 words wouldn't be much off. One word for every possible 2 letter combo and 2 or more words for easier letter pairs with more common letters.

So no. That is not the "big secret" of Maskow. Altough it is required (or at least VERY helpful) if you want to become good at BLD...


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## cmhardw (Aug 10, 2015)

tseitsei said:


> Well a 1000 words wouldn't be much off. One word for every possible 2 letter combo and 2 or more words for easier letter pairs with more common letters.
> 
> So no. That is not the "big secret" of Maskow. Altough it is required (or at least VERY helpful) if you want to become good at BLD...



The largest list that a cuber is using that I personally know of is Ian Winokur's letter pair PAO (Person-Action-Object), which if I am not mistaken would be 3*24^2=1728 prepared images. A letter pair image list is 24^2=576 and a letter pair image list plus a list of words for auditory memory is 2*576=1152. The closest number to 1000 is the two lists, one for audio and one for images, so perhaps that is what Marcin is doing? Another possibility is to have multiple images for certain letter pairs to aid in memorization and encoding.


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## Petro Leum (Aug 10, 2015)

It took me way too long to realize it's not about the one million ways to live with Maskow.


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## Berkmann18 (Aug 10, 2015)

A really cool interview.


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk


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## Myachii (Aug 10, 2015)

cmhardw said:


> The largest list that a cuber is using that I personally know of is Ian Winokur's letter pair PAO (Person-Action-Object), which if I am not mistaken would be 3*24^2=1728 prepared images. A letter pair image list is 24^2=576 and a letter pair image list plus a list of words for auditory memory is 2*576=1152. The closest number to 1000 is the two lists, one for audio and one for images, so perhaps that is what Marcin is doing? Another possibility is to have multiple images for certain letter pairs to aid in memorization and encoding.



Is PAO where you have three words assigned to each possible letter pair?
For example, if you had KN you could have Kenneth - Knitting - Gnome?


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## tseitsei (Aug 10, 2015)

cmhardw said:


> Another possibility is to have multiple images for certain letter pairs to aid in memorization and encoding.



Yeah, this is what I do and tried to say in my post. For some harder letter pairs I always use the same word/image but for most letter pairs I have 2 or even more possible words/images that I can use if they fit to my memo better


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## cmhardw (Aug 10, 2015)

Myachii said:


> Is PAO where you have three words assigned to each possible letter pair?
> For example, if you had KN you could have Kenneth - Knitting - Gnome?



Yes, that is correct. It is 60% of the information required to memorize using just images. Using just images, and three images per location, means three images with two interactions (usually). PAO is always a person, an interaction, and a direct object. It is very efficient, and according to Ian it is far easier to memorize this way.



tseitsei said:


> Yeah, this is what I do and tried to say in my post. For some harder letter pairs I always use the same word/image but for most letter pairs I have 2 or even more possible words/images that I can use if they fit to my memo better



I have heard top level BLDers talk about this as well. I think it is a good idea, though I think PAO is the "best" way based on the metric of ease of memorization and efficiency.


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## Myachii (Aug 10, 2015)

cmhardw said:


> Yes, that is correct. It is 60% of the information required to memorize using just images. Using just images, and three images per location, means three images with two interactions (usually). PAO is always a person, an interaction, and a direct object. It is very efficient, and according to Ian it is far easier to memorize this way.
> 
> 
> 
> I have heard top level BLDers talk about this as well. I think it is a good idea, though I think PAO is the "best" way based on the metric of ease of memorization and efficiency.



I'm not surprised, that method sounds incredibly efficient. It's a lot to learn but once you get the hang of it and improve execution speed, sub-1 must be easy xD


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## G2013 (Aug 10, 2015)

Cool video, cool cuber


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## Logiqx (Aug 10, 2015)

cmhardw said:


> The largest list that a cuber is using that I personally know of is Ian Winokur's letter pair PAO (Person-Action-Object), which if I am not mistaken would be 3*24^2=1728 prepared images. A letter pair image list is 24^2=576 and a letter pair image list plus a list of words for auditory memory is 2*576=1152. The closest number to 1000 is the two lists, one for audio and one for images, so perhaps that is what Marcin is doing? Another possibility is to have multiple images for certain letter pairs to aid in memorization and encoding.



It looks like he uses different words / images for edges and corners.

I think it would be (24 * 22) + (24 * 21) = 1032 images in total.


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## United Thought (Aug 10, 2015)

Wow, I never knew Maskow had ears.


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## Keroma12 (Aug 11, 2015)

Petro Leum said:


> It took me way too long to realize it's not about the one million ways to live with Maskow.



Ok good, I wasn't the only one.


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