light-sherlockian - Tumblr blog

[light-sherlockian]

Some retrograde analysis puzzles

Here are some of my favourite retrograde analysis puzzles. As usual, we only care about legal moves and not moves that make sense, there are sometimes additional bits of information such as white has never castled and such.

These are from/inspired by The Chess mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

It was said Sherlock didn't like chess as a game, but he found the mental exercise of deducing previous moves and facts about what must of occurred in a position fun. It was also said he's the third best at retrograde analysis, behind Mycroft and Moriarty. I thought @sleuth2k7 and @froogboi would enjoy these types of puzzles. They do not require chess intuition, but pure logic, backwards reasoning and inference.

The puzzles

These positions were made in my simple chess app, all by memory so some may not be exactly what you'd find in the book I learned retrograde analysis from.

We will start with some monochromatics, which means no pieces moved from one colour square to another. This has some weird implications, like pawns can only move once, the double space at the start or move via capture, and knights cannot move at all.

Monochromatic Puzzle One

The monochromatic above was attributed to Moriarty. The question is, which square is the bishop on, e3 or e4. The answer to this is very abstract and logical. You see, the question can be rephrased as "there is a piece between two differently coloured squares, which one is the piece on" and you can answer with confidence "the dark square" The reason for this is almost a leap of intuition, note that the white king has not moved the entire game, he isn't allowed on a white square so is trapped. Now note that the black king must of taken the last white piece on a light square, leaving nothing behind on the light squares apart from the black king. So by similar reasoning, the white bishop is on e3, the dark square, as it must of mopped up the last black piece on a dark square. You can ignore the white squares completely, and think of just an army of black and white pieces on dark squares all eating each other, only one thing will remain, and there it is clear it's the white bishop. If the white king was free to roam, then it'd be different story. Monochromatic Puzzle two

Above is another monochromatic. The question here is, what colour is the pawn on g3. Have a minute to think about this. First question that an intelligent observer may ask, is how did the king get out of e1? It cannot go on light squares, the answer being it castled. It must of castled kingside, as queenside the rook on a1 would on moves to a light square from a dark square which is illegal. So visualise the king castling kingside so it is now on g1, the pawn on h1 must of been pushed to h4 at some point, to allow the king to get to h2, and the pawn on g2 must of been pushed to g4 at some point to allow the king to go to g3. There is another option however, that the pawn on h3 took on g3, but that would trap the king in forever, so we know that didn't happen. This is to say, the g3 pawn must be black, as the white one moved.

Promotion Puzzle one

The story here was about Sherlock walking by and seeing a game similar to this one and noting that black promoted a piece, that was still on the board. This is a rather elegant puzzle I think. The first thin to note is that black is missing two pieces, the c8 lightsquare bishop and the h7 pawn. We also note white took a dark squared black piece on c3. As neither of these pieces could of made it to c3, we have proven there is an extra black piece that was taken on c3. This is all we need to prove black promoted at some point, however how do we know the piece is still on the board? Well, the pawn capture on c3 allowed white's dark square c1 bishop to escape. The pawn on h7 that promoted must of walked down the h file to h4, taken white's dark squared bishop on g3, then promoted on g1. That means white took, a black piece on c3, say a knight, then the white darksquare bishop was taken on g3, black promoted to another knight replacing the one that was taken, and moved back. Very pretty. Now it's your turn

Moriarty Promotion Piece

It is said Moriarty saw this position, after white castled and said "there is a promoted piece on this board" after three minutes, but could not say if it was a white or black promoted piece. Sherlock Holmes also tried this, however it took him twenty minutes. You have to show that the promotion took place, and it is still on the board.

Moriarty threat

When Sherlock was on the run from Moriarty, he received this threat, "you certainly have a capacity for making yourself invisible, Holmes, nevertheless, I can mate you in one move" In this puzzle, you have to show where the white king is, and show there is a mate in one. It is said that if you overlay this board on a map of London, where the white king is mated is where Sherlock's next hideout was. It was bombed shortly after this threat.

This isn't anywhere close to all the types of retrograde analysis puzzles, or the extent of fun you can have with them. I encourage any intellectual to become a chess detective and try these out yourself

[light-sherlockian]

Deduction for performing

Deduction for performing is unlike how most deductionists practice. With most photos, videos and online in general you have a much more time to think with much less distractions. It is also a mentalism performance at that point, using a real method to appear impressive with mental feats.

There are times in deduction performances you need to think, and that involves talking while you think of more salient points to say next. Bombing at the start of your live deduction career is common, and something you must push past to be entertaining. I think pushing yourself to perform real time deductions is important and has immeasurable benefits. What situations can you do this?

Generally in a setting where you are the focus of attention, when doing a reading in mentalism, or a slow burn magic trick will give you breathing room to think and come up with deductions. When you get into the flow state and facts about people start accumulating, it can be very satisfying. They tut when they mention their child, so you know they're a boy. You notice paint on their shoes, so they've been redecorating or doing art with a young child about. You know if it's for pleasure or practicality from the colours, usually. It's always very hard to teach deduction as so much of it is learned intuition or thinking for yourself about a novel situation. Certain standard deductions are good to be able to figure out for anyone.

What do they do for a living?

Specifically, this is hard, but generally you can tell if it required education or not, or if it is indoors or outdoors pretty easily. You can smell if someone works in a salon or if they are a cleaner. You can tell from their hands if someone is a construction worker. Knowing car brands and their logos can help you identify from their keys their financial status, and knowing they drive at all is helpful. Handedness Left or right handed, usually a good guess to say right. You can confirm more by watch placement, which hand they type with, ink marks if they write which fewer people do now. How to tell if you are right

Once thing I noticed when divining star signs was how people communicate with body language, you don't necessarily need to know the specific body language signs. You can intuit a lot of them, when people imagine a large object on their hand they often lower their hand a little, they shrink it mentally and therefore this dense object mentally weights their hand down. You will get a general sense when talking if you are getting warmer or colder. Say if I am talking about where someone lives, I assume they are a student who live in a small student space. I could check their shoes to see the tell tale scuff marks of people who walk up stairs regularly, if they'll let me. When I mention their small space, they might subtly shake their head or look a bit confused, here I have a body language cue to turn my miss into a hit, and instead talk about their bedroom alone rather than their living space. This works with many things, people look uncomfortable when you are getting something wrong, so you can quickly switch to the right lines and see them viably react. This is more mentalism than deduction, but it helps when performing deductions as to keep it entertaining.

[light-sherlockian]

Magic speed run

This post is split into a few parts: Card Magic, Coin Magic, Mentalism (tricks) and Mentalism (skills) How to learn these fast, with a minimum subset of skills required Card Magic and gambling sleights

This is the most prominent types of close up magic. While learning specific tricks online is fine, books offer much richer material than videos. Often with a right set of techniques, you can create almost any effect you like.

Common effects:

Any card at any number (Spectator says a card, and a number, the card is found at that position in the deck)

Find my card (A card chosen, returned the the deck and is found again, usually produced in some magical means)

Card change (A card magically transforms into another card)

Card vanish (A card... vanishes)

Important techniques:

Palming (The ability to hide a card in your hand to move it somewhere)

A control such as the classic pass (The ability to move a card around the deck without a spectator noticing)

Double lift (The ability to show one card with another hidden behind it)

Card swap (the ability to swap a card without being noticed)

Force (The ability to force a spectator to choose a desired card)

False shuffle (You look like you're shuffling but are not)

False deal (The ability to look like you are dealing the top card when you are not)

There are of course many other sleights, flourishes and techniques for card magic but with just theses you can make your own version of almost any effect you desire and improvise tricks on the spot or methods on the spot (So called Jazz magic)

Coin magic

Coin magic is very different to card magic, as it is over far more visual and you need to be much better at manipulating your chosen objects.

Common effects:

Coin vanish

Coin transformation

Coin teleportation

Coin duplication

Important techniques:

False pass (Pretend to pass a coin from one hand to another)

Palming (Unlike cards where you only really require one handed palming, coins you often need to know several methods of palming)

Retention vanish (A way of passing or vanishing a coin that tricks the eyes)

Pass (A secret or visual way of passing a coin between two hands)

Mentalism (Tricks)

The idea of mentalism is to show mental powers beyond those of the average person, this can be achieved via training and actually having superior mental faculties and with tricks. Unlike magic with a set cannon of techniques and effects, mentalism is very varied with many disparate techniques. Blindfold chess or Fast mental calculation are technically mentalism if you perform them.

Common effects:

Prediction

Mind reading (Including lie detection)

Mind control (Including hypnosis)

Advanced memory

Advanced calculation ability

Psychic powers of any kind

Important techniques:

Billet switching (The ability to switch two small pieces of paper)

Billet reading (The ability to read a small bit of paper without being obvious)

Pocket writing (Exactly as it sounds)

Memory systems (This laps into the genuine ability category, but with it you can prememorise calculations, learn progressive anagrams and generally use it in hidden ways to appear to be much more intelligent than you are)

Forces (The ability to force people to choose specific numbers, or thoughts)

Cold reading systems (Systems that let you give consistent personality readings)

Hot reading (Giving readings through information you know)

Mentalism (Skills)

This can be essentially any real skill that is impressive, fast calculation, blindfold rubik's cube solving, knowing the day of any date or being able to tell which hand someone holds a coin in.

Common effects:

Psychic readings

Hypnosis

Advanced memory

Advanced calculation ability

Important techniques:

Memory techniques (Mind palace and number system)

Fast mental calculation can be a mix of memory techniques, specific calculation techniques and practice

Deduction (Sherlock style deduction can be seen like a psychic reading)

[light-sherlockian]

How to count

Combinatorics is a very dry and boring subject... WHEN DONE WRONG In reality, it's awesome. It is the basis for a lot of probability and statistics, and can be pretty intuitive. As a kid, I derived the binomial formula and am going to give you a crash course on basic combinatorics and then go through how YOU can derive the binomial formula. There usual way to solve combinatorics problems with finite sets is to imagine a set of slots, and what can fill them. Here are some short cuts I use that will be explained throughout

Use slots to visualize counting problems. Like a slots machine

And means multiply

Or means add

Division means to get rid of repeats

Permutations how many different ways can you arrange ABCD? you could tediously list ABCD, ABDC ACBD....or use some dry formula, another way is to think of it as slots ____ For slots, and what can go in each slot? In slot one we can have A,B,C or D 4̲ ___ And for the second one, we already used one of the letters, so we three left over 4̲3͟__ similarly, we have 2 for the second to last slot, and 1 for the last slot 4͟3͟2͟1͟ So to find out how many combinations there are, we multiply these together 4*3*2*1 = 24. This is very common, we call this a factorial. 4! = 4*3*2*1 Similarly, 10! = 10*9*8*7*6*4*3*2*1 And 0! is 1, by the way. and if we had, for example 10! / 4! = 10*9*8*7*6*5 so division with these things is pretty easy, it cuts off the bits we don't want. Let's now imagine a similar question How many ways can we arrange a deck of cards? Well, there's 52 cards, 52 slots, so we know it's going to be 52*51*50*....*2*1 or 52!. Cool hu, no formula needed. Okay let's try asking some more complex questions. How many ways can we choose 4 letters from ABCD with replacement, so AAAA is allowed.

____ We have four slots, and each slot has 4 letters possible, so it'll be 4*4*4*4 which is 4^4 or 256 possible combinations. How many ways can we choose 3 letters from ABCD without replacement?

Now we have 3 slots ___ 4 possibilities for the first slot, 3 for the second, 2 for the third, so 4*3*2 is... 24, that's right. 3 slots or 4 doesn't matter, because you extra slot just gets the spare letter, and doesn't change the amount. If we had two slots instead, it'd be 12, which is different. How many ways can we choose 2 letters from ABCD with replacement? So now AA is allowed. Well now we have two slots, both with 4 possibilities, so there are 16 combinations. How to find the formula for permutations: Let's use an example, we are trying to find a formula for choosing r items from a list of n items. Here, r = 3, n = 52

How many ways can we choose 3 cards from a deck of cards, where order is important? This means that (Ace of spades, 3 of hearts, 2 of clubs) is not the same thing as (3 of hearts, 2 of clubs, Ace of spades) Well let's find the combinations first, we have 3 slots ___ 52 for the first slot, 51 for the second and 50 for the third. We know the answer is 52*51*50 = 132600 We can also write this as 52! / 49! As the 49! factorial "cuts off" 52! at the right part: turning 52*51*50*49*48....*2*1 into 52*51*50 Where does this 49 come from, is it a random? not at all, it's just 52 minus 3 in other words number of permutations = 52! / (52 - 3)! Or in a formula nPr = n!/(n - r)! The formula just falls out of what our institution tells us. Combinations So far we have avoided cases where order does not matter, this is because those are trickier, we need to get rid of repeats. For example AB and BA have been treated as different in our examples, but what if they are the same? Let's try an example How many ways can we choose 3 cards from a deck of cards, where order is NOT important? This means that (Ace of spades, 3 of hearts, 2 of clubs) is the same thing as (3 of hearts, 2 of clubs, Ace of spades) Well let's find the permutations first, we have 3 slots ___ 52 for the first slot, 51 for the second and 50 for the third. so the combinations are 52*51*50 = 132600 However these are too many! We are repeating ourselves a lot by counting (Ace of spades, 3 of hearts, 2 of clubs) as different from (3 of hearts, 2 of clubs, Ace of spades) So how many are we over counting by, well we need to find the amount of combinations for each hand of 3, and there are 3! ways of permuting 3 items. We just divide by this to get rid of the repeats 52*51*50 / 3! = 22100, and this is the correct answer. Let's try another example Out of all of the red cards in a deck of cards, how many ways are there to draw a hand of two? well, here we are working with 26 cards and two slots. __ 26 for the first slot, 25 for the second. We are drawing hands of two, so we need to get rid of 2! repeats, 2! is just two so Answer = 26*25 / 2 = 325 One more tricky one How many ways can we arrange the letters in the world "BREADED" so that they form a new word? this is a tricky one, because you'd think it was a permutation problem, we have 7 slots _______ so the answer is 7!, and you are close, however we have repeat letters "DDEEBRA" comes up a few times, because the Ds and Es can be swapped and it doesn't change it, there are sneaky duplicates, we have to divide out those doubles The answer is actually 7! / (2! 2!) It we had the word BREDDED, the answer would be 7!/(2! 3!) I hope that makes sense. there are now 3 Ds to divide out. How to find the formula for combinations: Let's use an example, we are trying to find a formula for choosing R items from a list of N items where order does not matter. Here, r = 5, n = 26 How many ways are there to choose 5 letters where we do not care about the order of the letters? I have very specific alphabet soup requirements. Here we have 5 slots _____ which are filled with 26*25*24*23*22 and that is how many permutations there are We know that we can write this as 26*25*24*23*22 = 26! / (26 - 5)! This is too many of course, within each 5 letter group, we need to get rid of repeats as (ABCDE) is currently being treated differently to (EDCBA). for example. To do that, we divide by how many combinations 5 can make, which is 5! now the answer is Answer = 26! / [(26 - 5)! * 5!] And we've done it, replace r and n back in rCn = n! / [(n - k)! * k!] Okay what now? Well for one, NEVER MEMORIZE these formulas. Funny coming from me, the memory guy however these can be derived in seconds in your head if you need them from intuition alone, and realistically you don't even need them. Just keep counting in your head with slots and you will get the right answer. Binomial derivation

Now to find the pattern we should look at the first few expansions (a+b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2 (a+b)^3 = a^3 + 3a^2b + 3b^2a + b^3 Let's write this differently to see the pattern (a+b)^2 = (aa) + (ab + ba) + (bb) (a+b)^3 = (aaa) + (aab + aba + baa) + ( abb + bab + bba ) + (bbb) and for good measure (a+b)^4 = (aaaa) + (abbb + babb + bbab + bbba) + (aabb + abab + abba + baba + baab + bbaa) + (baaa + abaa + aaba + aaab) + (bbbb) Now we can see the pattern, each addition is of size n, the amount of a decreases each time, while b increases each time, and each chunk is the combinations of the n letters. How we can write the general formula for this (a+b)^n = (aaaa...) + 1Cn(aaaa...b) + 2Cn(a....bb) + ... + n-1Cn(bbbb...a) + nCn (bbbb...) Writing this with the summation notation above, we derived it! Fun extra

Counting up to n and adding up the terms has the formula (n+1)n/2Example: counting to 100 = 1+2+3 + ... + 99 + 100 = 100*101/2 = 5050

[light-sherlockian]

MBTI cognitive functions

While it is pseudoscience/art, it is a useful short hand for describing others and yourself and I find it fun. Each type is made of 4 cognitive functions (technically 8 but we only care about the first four and are defined uniquely by the first two), while the E/I N/S T/F J/P typing is a useful starting point, however it leads to confusion like some ENTPs not being very extroverted or INFPs not being especially empathetic. There are 8 cognitive functions, 4 for judging and 4 for perceiving. It is important to know which type is which, judging functions help is make choices, while perceiving functions are how we interact with data.

4 judging functions: Ti Te Fi Fe

4 perceiving functions: Ni Ne Si Se

What do these mean? Well here's a run down of each

Ti - Introverted thinking - Logical, analytical. An internally consistent logical world. Slow and methodical thinking. Helps understanding why Te - Extroverted thinking - Domineering, organized and manipulative. Helps finding out how Fi - Introverted feeling - authentic. unique morals. Helps understand what you value Fe - Extroverted feeling - accommodating. compassionate. connected. Helps finding what a group values.

Ni - Introverted Intuition - insightful. Reflective. hones in on a vision. Pattern recognition. Knows what will be. Ne - Extroverted Intuition - Witty. explorative. Sees potentials. Knows what could be Si - Introverted Sensing - tidy. prepared. tried and true methods. knows what was Se - Extroverted Sensing - sensory overload. great external stimulation. Knows what is.

And each type has an order of four of these Dominant function, Aux function, Tertiary function, Inferior function For example let's take an INFP with functions Fi Ne Si Te

In the first two, these are what you rely on, so for an INFP, for example, Their dominant function is Fi, and their Aux function is Ne This means they have their rich inner morals and world, that is fed by their creative view of the world.

You always need an I and an E in your first two functions to have an internal and external world. The tertiary and inferior functions for INFP are Si, Te which means they can use introverted sensing to make choices and aid them, they usually rely on creative Ne instead.

Their weakness is Te which means they dislike external domineering logic. This would be almost opposite to an INTJ or ENTJ who loves that stuff.

This means you can type someone or yourself based on your weaknesses as much as your strengths. Interestingly, INFP and ISTJ share all the same functions in a different order, this shows how much the order matters because INFP and ISTJs are super different in how they think and behave. How do you know a types functions?

This is quite tricky to explain verbally.

There's two methods: Method 1. one is to know the functions of your type and be able to travel between them.

For example, I am an INTJ with functions Ni Te Fi Se To get to INTP, it'd be Ti Ne Si Fe Or to ENTJ it'd be Te Ni Se Fi Hopefully you can see the pattern here. INFJ would be Ni Fe Ti Se. Method 2. Another method is to work it out by the letters alone with this algorithm let's find the cognitive functions of an ESFP, the middle two letters SF tell us that it'll start with either Sx Fx or Fx Sx We do not know the order. The E at the start tells us it'll start with an extroverted function Se Fx or Fe Sx We also know that introverted and extroverted functions are paired Se Fi or Fe Si Now how do we know which of these it is? Now we look at the last letter, which is P here, this means that the first extroverted function will be a perceiving function. This narrows the first two down to Se Fi (If we had ESFJ, then it'd start with Fe Si, as the first extroverted function is a judging function) Once we know the first two functions, we have defined one of the 16 types and to work out the rest is easy Se Fi X Y, X is the opposite of the Aux function, opposite of Fi is Te Y is the opposite of the Dominant function, opposite of Se is Ni Therefore ESFP = Se Fi Te Ni Let's try another example INFJ So, we can see the first two will be Ni Fe or Fi Ne To be clear, we know the four goes Ni Fe Xi Xe Fi Ne Xi Xe As E types go E I E I, while I types go I E I E From the J we know that the first extroverted function is Juging, the only judging function here is F Now we've narrowed it down to Ni Fe Xi Xe And can work out the opposites Ni Fe Ti Se Therefore INFJ = Ni Fe Ti Se

[light-sherlockian]

Tattoos and Serial Killers

As many of you may know, there is a formula for narrowing down where a serial killer, or serial criminal in general lives based on where their crimes happen. It is actually rather simple (Although it looks scary)

This models two principles, that serial criminals will strike far away from their homes as to not implicate themselves, however not too far away, as we are inherently lazy. We wouldn't want to travel for three days just to kill. Where this gets fascinating is how this changes over time, serial criminals tend to expand their range as they get confident.

You will spatially and often in the crimes themselves see their confidence and comfort zone grow. This is what this post is actually about. It relates to tattoos because, people generally get the most simple/smallest tattoo first and expand from there. If you are trying to deduce someone's first tattoo, you can look for fading or other signs, but the best bet and common in mentalism is to just choose the smallest one.

You will see this pattern in most areas of human behaviour over time, small and simple to large and complex.

[light-sherlockian]

Mathematicians hate this trick!!! Study Notes: Transforming random var X to Y

Say you have a random variable X with some distribution and you want to turn it into Y, you integrate it over it's potential values to get the cumulative distribution function F_X(x) Now we invert that bad boy Q_x = arcF_X(x) And we repeat this again to get Q_y We know if we plug X into it's own CDF we get the uniform distribution on (0,1), by the *classic* probability integral transformation trick. In other words U = F_X(X) And by the inversion method we know Y = Q_Y(U) Omg do you see Y = Q_Y(F_X(X)) !!! we only require the CDF of x and the quantile function of Y. Practically for free! We can now write Y in terms of the random variable X.

[light-sherlockian]

Memorising governorates of Egypt with a mind palace

Image source

There are 27 governorates in Egypt. Here's how I memorise them:

Alexandria, Aswan = Alex in a swan costume in entrance

Asyut,Beheira = someone dippin their but in a lake by the phone shop

Beni Suef, Cairo = ben ten with a sword (sef in arabic) in cairo by the garage

Dakahlia, Damietta = white lady eating feta cheese by the pharmacy (dakahlia's capital is mansoura, which is famously full of "white" egyptians, damietta sounds like an egyptian brand of cheese)

Faiyum, Gharbia = a tree shade (Fai) to the west by the building

Giza, Ismailia = Ismael on top of pyramid by the tech store

Kafr El-Sheikh, Luxor = a sheikh in statue form (luxor famous for temples) by the bakers

Matrouh, Minya = king mina being kicked out of the lab

Monufia, New Valley = dad (from monufia) climbing a valley by the veggies seller

North Sinai, Port Said = a poor guy holding a sign high by the kiosk

Qalyubia, Qena = a tv turned upside down by the orphanage

Red Sea, Sharqia = a guy choking (sharaq) on red water by the corner

Sohag, South Sinai = horny dude holding a sign low by the school

Suez = a canal in the ruins of a building

[light-sherlockian]

Lock picking

I've been lock picking since 14 or so. This is a fun hobby all should enjoy. It will give you a critical eye, even if it useless in the real world a lot of the time.

When it comes to practical breaking into places, I recommend this video and the entire field of physical penetration testing.

[light-sherlockian]

How to win at blackjack

There are two steps to winning more often in black jack.

Know the rules (Google these, watch a few games)

Know your basic strategy

count cards if possible

Knowing basic strategy

The exact rules vary from the rules of where you are playing, but generally you can follow one and do better.

For example, the chart above makes sense. Anything 11 or below you must hit or double your bet because hitting will only improve your hand, you can't go bust. With 12 or more, you need to start thinking.

Use the chart above with the intuition below in mind with a few practice games online, and you will soon get the hang of it.

Count cards Card counting works by keeping track of dealed cards and working out what remains in the deck. For example if the dealer has dealt lots of low cards, it means the deck will have more high cards and you can use the assumption of the next card being high to play smarter and bet smarter. Low cards being dealt are good for you, because it leaves lots of high cards in the deck for you. How do you keep track? Well, there are several methods. My favourite is memorising how many of each card is left in the deck. Let's say for example, we have 2 decks. There will be 8 Aces, 2s,3s,4s,5s,6s,7s,8s,9s and 32 cards with the value 10. I have 10 places in one of my mind palaces free. Each will start off with the number presenting the starting amount.

Loci 1 - 18 -> Sandy

Loci 2 - 28 -> Diana

Loci 3 - 38 -> Sarah

Loci 4 - 48 -> Rem

Loci 5 - 58 -> Nour

loci 6 - 68 -> Santa

Loci 7 - 78 -> Sam

Loci 8 - 88 -> Billie

Loci 9 - 98 -> Gabby

loci 10 - 132 -> Rachel

When playing, these will get adjusted mentally. Let's say I get A,7 and the dealer has a face up card 9. From the basic strategy, I know to hit. Let's say I get given a 3 A,7,3 vs Dealers 9 I stand, and the dealer turns their card to reveal a Q. my 20 vs dealers 19, I win. After this round, my mind palace would be updated like so.

Loci 1 - 17 -> Plankton

Loci 2 - 28 -> Diana

Loci 3 - 37 -> Teddy

Loci 4 - 48 -> Rem

Loci 5 - 58 -> Nour

loci 6 - 68 -> Santa

Loci 7 - 77 -> Lizzy

Loci 8 - 88 -> Billie

Loci 9 - 97 -> Daragh

loci 10 - 131 -> Ellis

This reflects the cards that were given out. This must be done with little effort at speed.

[light-sherlockian]

Memory is not deduction!

Welcome to another one of Damian's rants, the last one I made got a lot of attention, I hope I can reach as many people with this one. This time we're discussing memory! a very cool topic but also one I've seen misused more times than I can count, some very recently. So here are my two cents on how it relates to deduction and how to use it correctly.

So anyone that's ever gotten into deduction has at some point heard of amazing memory feats being used in the process, we've all seen Sherlock talk about his mind palace, claiming to know 243 types of tobacco ash, or know the number of a flight that takes off from London that week. Hell, whoever's seen a deductionist do their thing in real life has probably heard them talk about how they've memorized the most common plants from a certain area, or the phone passwords of everyone in their class, and we've all probably assigned more importance to memory than we should've

My theory as to why this happens is simply because when we see anyone deduce, and we see memory being implicated, we latch onto it because it's the most familiar of the two skills at hand. This leads to people developing their memory skills and orienting it towards deduction, and before you know it you've trained a completely different skill and you're getting almost nowhere with your deductions

So the question becomes, what separates the two? why do we see memory be used in deduction so much and how much importance should we actually give it?

Well while memory is very much its own, complex skill, when studying deduction we should treat memory more as a tool than as a discipline. Deduction is, at its core, based on reasoning and logic, and yes, memory can be important when employing reasoning, for example as humans we inform our reasoning by past experiences, which are after all memories, but memory and knowledge mean nothing if we're not able to apply them correctly. On the other hand, just because you don't have the knowledge about something or someone committed to memory, doesn't mean you can't apply logic to gain information and reach conclusions. I may not know 243 types of tobacco ash but I do know tobacco ash means someone's been smoking, I do know smokers take regular breaks from activities to go smoke, I do know smokers can have nicotine stains on their fingers, I know smokers carry packs of cigarettes and lighters, that their smoking gets more intense under stress, and that they can develop an intense, dry cough, all of that is information I know about an individual without ever having a knowledge bank about cigarettes in my head.

So, long story short, deduction is a skill that does not by any means hinge on memory, but that rather can be aided by it, which leads me to my next point: how do we make memory useful?

Imagine downloading the entire internet onto your phone, it sounds cool right? all the information about everything in history, and you can access it on the go no matter what, no data? no wifi? no signal? no problem, you have it all there! It's an exciting concept, but now sit back and think about how much of that you'll actually use, probably not even 10% of that information will be touched 90% of the time, simply because it's just not useful for you. Now in that same vein imagine having a mind palace and filling it with all the crap you can think of, the periodic table, phone extensions for every country in the world, the 100 most common medications, all the countries in the world, and more. Now think about how much of that is actually useful to you, even better, think about how much of that is knowledge you can't get with a 5-second googling session, the answer is almost none of it will be useful to you most of the time and all of it can just be googled.

These are the two most important things to keep in mind when filling a mind palace or memorizing anything:

Is it actually useful for me? don't memorize the phone extensions of every country when most smartphones today tell you what country someone's calling from, plus, again, you can just google it, it takes 5 seconds. To quote one Sherlock Holmes (or at least the BBC version): "ordinary people fill their heads with all kinds of crap and that makes it hard to get to the stuff that matters"

Is it information you can't just google? Look, Sherlock Holmes was written in the 1800s, they didn't have the entire internet in their pocket, having information memorized was basically all they could do to carry it around, unless they wanted to carry bags full of books, tomes, and encyclopedias. You don't have to memorize everything, most information is already in your hand right now

So, for example, I do a lot of chemistry, I don't always have a periodic table with me, and while I do have my phone I have to use information about the elements so often that looking it up actually slows down the process (seriously, I have to work with 3 or 4 different elements and check them multiple times for a single problem or lab calculation, the back and forth on a phone ends up just being annoying). So for me, it's very useful to have the periodic table stored away in my mind palace for easy access whenever I need it (trust me, it's saved me in countless exams)

A final, but definitely not less important point I want to hammer down is this: Make sure you know how to use the information you memorize. Look, I have the periodic table memorized, but I've done it in a very specific way so it maintains its structure in my head, because the place where an element is on the table actually gives you information about it, and this is something not everyone knows. I had a friend who also memorized the table and had no chemistry knowledge, and he did it in a way that was almost useless if he ever wanted to put it in practice, it was quite literally wasted mind palace space.

That's all for this talk, I hope it was useful!

Happy Observing

-DV

[light-sherlockian]

Basic music information

Reading notes is very easy. The notes go from A to G and is cyclic, with some notes having sharps and flats. X# will denote X sharp. Xᵇ will denote X flat. C, C#/Dᵇ, D, D#/Eᵇ, E, F, F#/Gᵇ, G, G#/Aᵇ, A, A#/Bᵇ. B Notice E and B do not have a sharps, or alternatively, F and C do not have a flats. The notes are represented by position, with sharps and flats being noted with symbols. The notes colour and shape represent the duration of the note. The images below explain the very basics, if you struggle you can use videos or google to help. I just put these here to get it out the way.

How to read music You will need to practice a bit to get it down, you can use some mnemonics such as FACE for the white space on treble cleft and "every great boy deserves fun" for the lines. AceG should be simple enough to memorise for the white space of the bass clef and "great Britain decides for all" for the lines. Although these are crutches, you should just practice until you can read it with ease, it does not take very long. How to make chords A chords name implies a formula to make chords, you can learn the notes between.

These formula can be memorised using your number memory system, and if you know your notes as well you can make them on the fly. For example, if you get asked to play a Fmin7, you would start with an F, go three along (F#/Gᵇ,G,G#/Aᵇ) so the next note is Aᵇ/G#, we go four along (A,A#/Aᵇ,B,C) so the next note in C, then we go three along (C#/Dᵇ,D,D#/Eᵇ) and so the last note is D#/Eᵇ. Meaning the notes are written as F,Aᵇ,C,Eᵇ My associations for these chords are as follows Major R-4-3 -> Major Mello Minor R-3-4 -> Child being held by director Seventh R-4-3-3 -> Lamppost being chucked in a microwave Minor seventh R-3-4-3 -> Small lamppost being held by Elizabeth Major seventh R-4-3-4 -> large lamppost being thrown into dishwasher Augmented R-4-4 -> AR headset being worn by light's dad

Diminished R-3-3 -> Dim lightbulb being screwed in by Mahone Music theory Here is a starting place. speaking to actual musicians helps. Youtube as well.

https://iconcollective.edu/basic-music-theory/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20basic%20music%20theory,texture%2C%20dynamics%2C%20and%20others.

[light-sherlockian]

Mentalism, Magic and Deduction.

Magic and mentalism are both performing arts. Sherlockian deduction is not for performance, it is meant to be reliable. Magic is usually things that are for certain, and present impossible feats like coins vanishing and cards appearing and disappearing. Mentalism often uses deduction, trickery and mental skills to give presentations of mind reading, photographic memory or calculation skills or ability to control ones body. Deduction is the use of science and inference to come to probable conclusions about people and things. It relies a lot of prior knowledge, and working out possibilities. Deductionists and mentalists can both appear psychic or genius, however it is down to hard work, training and discipline. Mentalists often have a more flexible skillset as they are not limited by what it useful, as they can do things simply because they are entertaining or impressive. Memorising lots of data very fast, knowing insane amounts about subjects, and being able to tell what jobs people do or things about them are some of the overlap between mentalism and deduction.

[light-sherlockian]

How to memorise the periodic table

I learned the periodic table a list in atomic order, with images for some numbers to make traversing through it easy. If you are a chemist, you should have one loci per element with associations for the atomic number, boiling point, etc and sort them by groups. I usually put 3 elements per loci. Any image referencing a number is for the last element in that loci. It is listed below. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium -> Hydrogen bomb falling on a balloon with batteries inside. Beryllium, Boron, Carbon -> Berries on a boring drill that find diamonds (I used to collect beryllium oxide from microwaves) Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine -> Will butler pouring nitrogen on an oxygen tank and it spills onto the flooring. Neon, Sodium, Magnesium -> Neon sign with salt pouring down into milk of manganese, an octopus is in the milk. Aluminium, Silicon, Phosphorus -> Squidward holding aluminium can, he has silly cone on his head that glows like phosphorus. Sulphur, Chlorine, Argon -> A creeper blows up the door to a swimming pool, Aragorn is swimming with foam hands Potassium, Calcium, Scandium -> A giant banana has a skeleton in it that is scanning Michael Callidus. Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium -> Titanic is being vandalised on google chrome by Dalila Manganese, Iron, Cobalt -> A Mango is picked by iron man while he fends off a Kobald called Tobias.

[light-sherlockian]

How to memorise the periodic table

I learned the periodic table a list in atomic order, with images for some numbers to make traversing through it easy. If you are a chemist, you should have one loci per element with associations for the atomic number, boiling point, etc and sort them by groups. I usually put 3 elements per loci. Any image referencing a number is for the last element in that loci. It is listed below. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium -> Hydrogen bomb falling on a balloon with batteries inside. Beryllium, Boron, Carbon -> Berries on a boring drill that find diamonds (I used to collect beryllium oxide from microwaves) Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine -> Will butler pouring nitrogen on an oxygen tank and it spills onto the flooring. Neon, Sodium, Magnesium -> Neon sign with salt pouring down into milk of manganese, an octopus is in the milk. Aluminium, Silicon, Phosphorus -> Squidward holding aluminium can, he has silly cone on his head that glows like phosphorus. Sulphur, Chlorine, Argon -> A creeper blows up the door to a swimming pool, Aragorn is swimming with foam hands Potassium, Calcium, Scandium -> A giant banana has a skeleton in it that is scanning Michael Callidus. Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium -> Titanic is being vandalised on google chrome by Dalila Manganese, Iron, Cobalt -> A Mango is picked by iron man while he fends off a Kobald called Tobias.

[light-sherlockian]

Practice observation and memory techniques

This is a little game to play to increase your observation skills and recall. A lot of this can become subconscious if you do it often enough.

Go to a public space, and notice obvious features. Shoe colour, t-shirt, name tags on employees. Turn these into images, and attach the images to the people. Make sure to use your observation method from @deduction-tutorials Mine is up down left right. For example, I went to a juice bar the other day. The names of the people working were Monica, Mehdi and Jennifer. Monica's tag had store manager on it, and she had a white bandage on her left pinky finger. I recalled this a few days later because at the time, I turned their names into images and attached it to them as images. If I saw them again on the street, I'd know their names and some deductions I made from them at the time. This has great effect with birthdays, you can turn someone's birthday into an image with your memory system and attach it to them to never forget their birthday. Force yourself to do this over and over until making observations and turning them into images and attaching them feels easy and natural, rather than tiring.

[light-sherlockian]

Graphology and Graphonomics

Graphology is a pseudoscience that has never been proven. Graphonomics is the scientific study of hand writing, drawing and the like.

Graphology is to graphonomics what astrology is to astronomy.

Graphology claims to know personal details like personality, age, and things from hand writing. There is little evidence to support this is possible, other than gender which can be guessed correctly between 50% and 70% of the time based on training and luck. Graphonomics is the science of studying hand writing and what it can be used for, one compelling use is spotting fake signatures. This can be done via machine learning (my wheel house) or regular statistics by seeing how often down strokes match up between signatures. Real signatures have a lot of variance, while forgers or tracers tend to mimic signatures too closely. If anyone is interested in the studies, please dm me. My work is also allowing me to do some machine learning and statistical research on hand writing so if you'd like to know that that goes, please contact me. Throughout all graphonomics and graphology, it seems that downward strokes in writing give about the same information as the writing as a whole, and graphonomics also focuses on using computers to generate, regenerate and record graphical skills.