A Complete Dominic System List, 00 to 99

The list: 00 to 99

The Dominic System turns each digit into a letter (1 is A, 2 is B and so on up to 5 is E, then 6 is S, 7 is G, 8 is H, 9 is N and 0 is O), so every number from 00 to 99 becomes a pair of initials, and each pair of initials becomes a person doing one thing they are known for. The table below fills all hundred rows. Read a two-digit number as its person, and a four-digit number as the first pair's person doing the second pair's action.

The Initials column is worked out from the number, so it is always right; the Person column is our suggestion, and you should replace any row that does not bring a face to mind within a second.

How to read a row

Most rows are a real or fictional person whose first and last names start with the two letters: 15 is A.E., so it is Albert Einstein, and 86 is H.S., so it is Homer Simpson. The action beside each name is the thing you would see that person doing if you closed your eyes, which is why Einstein scribbles on a blackboard and Homer eats a doughnut. Neither action needs explaining, and that is the test every row has to pass.

Some pairs of initials belong to nobody you could picture, and the list solves those in three ways that the Dominic System guide describes. Rows such as 01, 05 and 99 use a generic figure whose description has the right initials: an Olympic Athlete, an Old Emperor, a Night Nurse. Rows marked bent rule use one well-known name whose first two letters fit, so Odin covers 04 (O-D), Batman covers 21 (B-A) and Neptune covers 95 (N-E). And 07 is James Bond, the one deliberate cheat in the system, because 007 is too good a fit to waste.

Row 40 is D.O., which is Dominic O'Brien, the memory champion the system is named after, so we kept him there, fanning out a deck of cards, since cards are what made his name.

Four digits in one picture

A single row stores two digits, but the reason to learn a Dominic list rather than a list of a hundred pegs is the pairing rule: the first pair gives the person and the second pair gives the action. Four digits become one scene, and the scene is memorable because it is wrong.

Take 8642. The first pair, 86, is Homer Simpson, and the second, 42, is David Beckham, whose action is bending a free kick. So 8642 is Homer Simpson bending a free kick, belly and all, and you will not confuse it with 4286, which is David Beckham eating a doughnut. The two pictures share the same people but swap who does what, which is what keeps the order of the digits safe.

A longer number is just more scenes in a row. The date 20 07 1969 splits into 2007 and 1969: Barack Obama (20) firing a pistol (Bond's action, from 07), then Alfred Nobel (19) twirling a shawl (Stevie Nicks's action, from 69). Put the first scene at your front door and the second in your hallway, walk past them once, and the date is stored as two images rather than eight loose digits. A hundred-digit number needs twenty-five such scenes, which is why people who train with this list for long numbers pair it with a memory palace of twenty-five or so places.

When a number has an odd length

The list is built from pairs, so a number like 31415 leaves one digit over. The simplest fix is to treat the leftover digit as a pair of its own, a person with no borrowed action: 3141 is Captain America whispering beside a gorilla, and the 5 becomes 05, the Old Emperor, standing alone.

The catch is the one that people raise about every two-digit system: when you read the number back, was that last image 5 or 05? Readers on the Art of Memory forum suggest the two usual answers. If the numbers you memorise never start with a zero, you can add one at the front so the length comes out even, and if they can, you keep a separate list of ten images for the single digits 0 to 9. For phone numbers, PINs and dates the problem rarely comes up, because you already know how long the number is.

Why every action is different

A Dominic list only works if each action belongs to one row. If 15 and 71 both wrote on a blackboard, then 1515 and 1571 would be the same scene, Einstein at the board, and you could not tell which number you had stored. O'Brien's own rule is that every action must be unique across the hundred, and the table follows it.

That rule is why three rows here differ from the starter list in the Dominic System guide. The guide's 00 to 19 had four rows that fire something, and it suggested moving Al Capone from his tommy gun to rolling a barrel of bootleg beer, so this list does exactly that. Oliver Cromwell orders the mace out of Parliament rather than swinging a sword, which Antonio Banderas already does as a fencer, and Olivia Newton-John leads an aerobics class rather than roller-skating, which sat too close to Bart Simpson's skateboard. The three rows that still shoot use three different weapons held three different ways: Orlando Bloom draws a bow, Bond holds a pistol in one hand, and Annie Oakley shoulders a rifle. If those three blur together for you, change one of them first.

The same thinking runs through the rest of the table. Charlie Chaplin waddles with his cane rather than tipping his hat, because Oliver Hardy at 08 already has the bowler, and Gandalf blows smoke rings rather than raising his staff, because Charlton Heston at 38 is carrying tablets down the mountain and a staff would put the two old men with beards too close together. Where two people share a world (Homer and Bart Simpson, or Al Capone and Eliot Ness), their actions point in different directions, so a scene with one never calls up the other.

Making the list yours

The best person for a row is someone you already know well, and very often that is not a celebrity. If your uncle is called Gary Davies, he is a better 74 than Grace Darling will ever be, provided he has an action you can see: Gary carving the turkey, say. Your own people arrive faster and last longer, because you are not learning them, you are only learning which number they stand for.

When you swap a row, check three things before you write it in. The initials must match the number, using the letter table at the top of this page. The action must be one you can picture without thinking, and it must be one that no other row uses. Then check that the newcomer looks like nobody already on the list, because two grey-haired men in suits will merge into one man after a week of practice.

Once a row is settled, leave it alone. A list works because the same person always answers the same number, and constant improvement keeps it from ever becoming automatic. The Dominic System guide's advice is to change a person only after they have failed you three times in practice, and that is a good rule here too.

The rows that need a word of explanation

A few rows lean on a film or a story that is worth naming. Alan Grant (17) is the palaeontologist in Jurassic Park, Arthur Dent (14) is the hero of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who travels the galaxy in a dressing gown, and Egon (57) is Egon Spengler of Ghostbusters, whose first name gives the bent-rule E-G. Dr. Evil (45) is the villain of the Austin Powers films, Dorothy Gale (47) is the girl from The Wizard of Oz, and Scarlett O'Hara (60) is the heroine of Gone with the Wind, who pulls down the curtains to make a dress. Eddie Edwards (55) is the British ski-jumper everyone knows as Eddie the Eagle.

Others are historical. Grace Darling (74) rowed out with her father in a storm in 1838 to rescue survivors of a shipwreck, Diana Nyad (49) swam from Cuba to Florida, and Hannibal Barca (82) took war elephants over the Alps. You do not need the history to use the row, only the picture, but a story often makes the picture stick.

The generic figures fill rows where no famous name made an easy picture. A Concert Organist (30), an Eager Otter (50), a Space Alien (61), a Grizzly Bear (72), a Nightclub DJ (94), a Nimble Gymnast (97) and a Night Nurse (99) are all easy to picture and all quite unlike each other. They are also the first rows to replace once you think of a real person, since a face you know beats a type you have to imagine.

Learning it in a couple of weeks

Do not try to learn all hundred rows in a sitting. O'Brien suggests building ten to twenty a day, which gets you through the list in a week or two without any row going soft from neglect. A good order is to start with the rows that came to you instantly as you read the table, since those are already half learned, and to leave the bent rows and generic figures until last.

To drill, put the list in a spreadsheet with the number in one column and the person and action in the next, save it as a .csv file with a header row of front,back, and upload it at the import page. Every front is a number from 0 to 99, so the importer recognises a pegset and links each row to its peg entry; type 00 to 09 as text so the leading zeros survive the spreadsheet. Then pick the new deck in the numbers practice and your people print beside the pairs. Work at two-digit groups until every row answers in under a second, then run the same drill reading the pairs two at a time, saying each scene aloud (the first person doing the second person's action) before you move on.

Drill the list backwards too. Seeing Homer Simpson and saying 86 is a different skill from seeing 86 and saying Homer Simpson, and you need both, because memorising a number uses one direction and reading it back from your palace uses the other.

Dominic list or PAO list?

The Dominic list is not the only way to put more than two digits into one picture. A PAO list adds an object to every row, so each image carries six digits instead of four, and the difference shows up in how many places a long number needs.

The cost is the same hundred rows in every case, plus a hundred objects for PAO, so the Dominic list sits in the middle: one more thing to learn per row than a list of pegs, and one fewer than PAO. It is also quicker to build than PAO, because each row needs one thing fewer. If you would rather use words, the Major System chart has a peg for every number from 00 to 99 and reads in both directions, which a Dominic list never does.

Whichever you choose, the list is only the start. Learn the rows until they are automatic, put the scenes in a palace, and four digits will arrive as one picture of someone you know doing something they would never do.