The New Yorker, February 8, 1999 P. 27
Talk story about memory savant Tatiana Cooley, 27, and the U.S. Memoriad .. Writer interviews Tony Buzan, who founded the international Memoriad in England eight years ago... Although the other candidates had spent weeks studying intricate memory-honing systems and techniques, Cooley proceeded to beat them in event after event—remembering the names to go with the faces in a hundred photographs, recalling strings of numbers and lists of words, memorizing much of an original sixty-line poem by Buzan (“It was about clouds and electricity,”Cooley recalled), and reciting the sequence of an entire deck of cards. After she won last year, Cooley was flown to London to participate in the international competition, where she took second place in the women’s division. If she wins the American Memoriad again this week, she will get a second shot at the international title in August. “I want to place first in the world,” she said calmly. “And then I’d probably retire. Like Michael Jordan."
