The memory palace

Answer Doyle

A name, and it is said once, in the first sentence. Section 4 often opens with the one proper noun in the whole recording — if you are still settling into your seat when it arrives, it is gone.

Answer memory

"A memory technique called a 'mind palace' or 'memory palace.'" Both names are given together. The gap is followed by "palace", so only the first half of the second name fits.

Answer thousands

"The method for remembering has existed for thousands of years." The sentence before it says the idea was not a BBC creation — the speaker signals a correction, and a correction is almost always followed by an answer.

Answer structure

"It is a real structure, such as a home or building." Home and building are printed in the sentence as the examples, so neither of them is the answer — the gap wants the general word they are examples of.

Answer well

"Choose a physical space that you know well." One word, an adverb, and grammar fixes it before you hear it. Students who expect a noun here wait for the wrong kind of word and miss it.

Answer path

"Using the path that you would normally take through it." The word is repeated twice more afterwards, which is the recording's way of telling you it matters.

Answer map

"Suggests first drawing a simple map of your memory palace." "First" marks the order, and the next instruction — number the places — is a different step, which is the distractor if you are a beat late.

Answer connections

Three items in a list, two printed, one missing. The answer is the third, and it is plural — the printed sentence shows that with "between", which needs more than one thing.

Answer crazy

"Imagining things in a humorous or crazy way." Two adjectives joined by "or", the first printed. The earlier description of the palace as "extraordinary and humorous" is the near-miss: it is the same idea in different words, in a different place.

Answer permanent

"Placing the objects next to or on something permanent." The word appears twice before this — in the list of three keys, and in the advice about doors and steps — so if you lost it here, the recording had already offered it to you twice.