Tuttle - Learning Chinese Characters

A few folks have recommended Tuttle for learning 800 chinese characters. Thought I'd give it a try. I probably know about 150 characters but took the test at MDBG and found that I only scored 85% on 100 characters. Either I forgot the pinyin equivalent or I forgot the meaning. Tuttle supposedly brings it all together. The big thing for me is remembering the tones. Tuttle uses stories and visual hints to remember the characters. High first tone = giant, Rising second tone = fairy, Third up and down tone = teddy bear, Fourth falling abrupt tone = dwarf, Neutral tone = robot. For example, the character for Gate/Door is easy to remember because it sort of looks like a [ ]. However, remembering the tone is another story. Well, Tuttle writes it up with a story about a FAIRY collecting MONey at the GATE. The MONey tells the approximate pronounciation, the fairy the tone and the gate the meaning. 门

Another good example of the Tuttle system is the character for "cup".  It's a combination that uses the tree character and the "not" character.  This does not bring to mind a cup.  Tuttle's story is about a lumberman that's about to cut down a tree and someone shouts NOT that TREE with the CUP on it, it belongs to the GIANT who uses it to collect the syrup for his BAcon.   So TREE and KNOT tells me the characters, GIANT  tells me high 1st tone and BAY is the prounciation.    杯

There's a few more mnemonic tricks and some of the stories seem overly elaborate but that's because they are for future building blocks. I'm up Chapter 5. So far so good. Most of the characters I know already but now I'm finally remembering the tone.