SMU student Kenneth Tan, aged 23-years old, a second-year Information Systems undergraduate was already holding two Singapore memory records – for the fastest recall of one deck of cards and spoken numbers at one digit per second. On 1 September 2017 in SMU, he broke four more memory records which made it to the Singapore Book of Records: Fastest Recall of Two Decks of Cards, taking 11 min 55 sec to memorise and recall; Most Binary Digits Memorised with 524 digits correctly recalled; Most Single Digits Memorised with 228 digits recalled; and Historic/Future Dates Memorised. In the last three events, contestants were given 5 min to memorise and 15 min to recall.

Being a memory athlete does give Mr Tan, an edge in his studies – up to a point. "If the module is about memorising, I will ace it. But besides memorising, application is something else that the university looks for." Mr Tan went from using sheer willpower to picking up techniques from the Internet. What works for him is the well-known memory palace or memory journey method: "You place objects around this palace in your mind, so when you walk through it, you know which object is placed in which location." Mr Tan will be taking part in the upcoming Singapore Open Memory Championships 2017, happening on 30 September and 1 October, vying for the top spot with 80 participants from 11 countries.