If you remember it wrong, its over. (you keep the money you got and that’s it)

No notes, digital physical or otherwise. You’re only allowed to use your brain.

Starts with 5 words, totally random, then next day it 6 words (the original words from the previous day is kept the same, but adding one new word). Day one prize is $1000, day 2 prize is $2000… (so you have $3000 if you got the first 2 days correct) and so on…

(All currency in USD at current exchange rate)

How much do you think you can get?


I think I max out at like 12 words, then I’d just mess it up.

  • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    I’m a biologist, undergrad was tons of memorizing lists of vaguely related words. Since it’s an additive list and it’s literally the only thing I’d have to do, 100+ at least. 200+ if it forms any sort of coherent sentence. Every day, all I’d be doing is practicing the previous list and learning one new word.

    Edit: for giggles, I calculated how much you’d earn at 100 days, then 200. The formula is T= 1000(n(n+1))/2 for anyone who is curious.

    At 100 days, you’d have $5,050,000.

    At 200, $20,100,000.

  • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    My neighbour plays this game with us. He has a pile of cards. Every card has a word on it. Short and long all mixed up. You shuffle the deck and he laysbdown the cards one by one. After he went throigh the cards he just szs the wordt in order from memory. He can get up to 150 card. He never rails before 100.

  • zxqwas@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    In my youth I memorised some 50 digits of pi in a similar fashion for fun. Considering 1000 USD i could and should treat it as a full time job I’m guessing a month or so before my laziness gets in the way and I make a mistake.

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    3 days ago

    Do a web search for “mnemonic technique memory linking”. There’s a technique for just this sort of application.

    The pay is more than I make in my current job starting on day 1. 100 days would be over 5 million dollars, enough to retire on. I can devote 8 hours per day for 3.5 months for retirement level money memorizing a list of 100 words.

  • marud@piefed.marud.fr
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    3 days ago

    I forgot the start of this topic title when I arrived at the end so I would say negative 1 day

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    If you just asked me to repeat a phrase that someone said earlier in the day, I’d have no idea.

    But, if I have 24 hours in between, and it’s worth thousands of dollars, I’d make a little song out of it and it’ll probably the only thing that would be in my head all day every day.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Memorizing the first 5 words would be the hardest, after that any mnemonic technique would allow you to keep going for a LONG time since it’s essentially memorizing one word a day.

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I have a terrible memory, but for the money you’re giving, I would invest a decent amount of time into reciting this over and over for hours and make it into a game the best I can. Considering the potential of this making all my financial issues go away, it seems like a very easy solution.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    As it sounds like there’s no risk involved (ie, if I get 5 days right and then the 6th one wrong, I still keep all the money from the 5 days), I think I could probably do this for at least 10 days and probably more. Which would work out at $55k, I think? Not too bad.

    For anyone wondering, I think you’d have to keep going for 141 days to get to a million. Keep it up for a year and you’d win $66,795,000.

    A billion would take 1414 days (3.87 years), and to pass Musk’s current total (480.1b, according to a quick search) you’d need to keep getting it right for… longer than I’m willing spend time on to make my spreadsheet calculate. I’m sure there a formula to work it out, but I’ll leave that to someone else :-)

  • zlatiah@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’m genuinely not sure, but if it is literally just one additional word per day on top of the previous words that don’t change… I’ve memorized a length 35+ randomly generated password (with special characters) out of spite just a year ago. I think I will do fine in this game, at least for 20-30 days. My memory might not handle anything more than that

    Especially since… if my calculations are correct, doing this game for 29 days consecutively would net you $435K, an amount so large that it is larger than the median wealth in the country with the highest median wealth currently in the world ($413,193/adult in 2024); another few days would get you over the average ($498,290/adult) as well. So there is a pretty strong incentive to just do this full time and really give you all

    Fun fact, when I was in middle school in China (not sure if they do it anymore) we were expected to memorize whole ancient Chinese poems and literary critiques written by the likes of Lu Xun… with like a month each. They actually appear on the exams and we were supposed to just know the entire poems cover to cover. Which is about the difficulty of this challenge with way less rewards

    I think funnier ways to do this would include progressively introducing weirder words (old English or borrowed words from other languages like rendezvous or schnitzel), roll a dice on how many words are added (jackpot: now remember 30 more words at once!), make you only have 5 minutes to remember and then keep going on a live show, etc… These would make a fun reality TV show actually

    • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 days ago

      Fun fact, when I was in middle school in China (not sure if they do it anymore) we were expected to memorize whole ancient Chinese poems and literary critiques written by the likes of Lu Xun… with like a month each. They actually appear on the exams and we were supposed to just know the entire poems cover to cover. Which is about the difficulty of this challenge with way less rewards

      💀 They made me recite a random story from those student handbooks/textbooks. (I forgot whatbit was by now)

      And they start teaching the 9x9 time table, and we had to memorize it. I still have it deeply engrained in memory. Every times I do multiplication, that song/poem thing gets conjured and its somehow always in mandarin, I can never recite it in Cantonese (because they teach it in mandain of course).

      But that took a whole school year I think, one word a day would be tough, I’ve forgotten a master password once.

    • baldingpudenda@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      This made me remember the same on middle school in America. Recite a poem we had been discussing and analyzing all week. It was maybe 60 to 100 words long and we had a week(introduce Monday and recite next Monday)