Evan Xie, a Grade 10 student, received an International Master of Memory designation after a recent competition in China.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
If committing a 10-digit phone number to memory seems daunting, try memorizing more than 1,000 randomly ordered digits in one hour.Nova Scotia high school student Evan Xie recently did just that, one of three memorization tasks he completed to earn the title of International Master of Memory at the World Memory Championships in China.
The 16-year-old also memorized 12 decks of randomly shuffled cards in one hour and a single deck of cards in about 32 seconds, one minute and 28 seconds under the time limit.
Xie, who is from eastern China but attends King's-Edgehill boarding school in Windsor, N.S., says his memory is photographic and he also uses rhythm to recall the lengthy list of numbers and suits.
He says he trained for 10 hours a day leading up to the competition last month, where nearly 300 people from across the globe competed over three days.
The school says Xie is one of only 160 people in the world to earn the Master of Memory designation.