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That works because they're real sentences, and sentences have structure and make sense. Reciting a 50 word paragraph from a book/movie word for word is infinitely easier than remembering 50 random words in the correct order.
Again though - you made a real sentence out of a random string of letters. What OP is asking isn't a real sentence, nor a string of letters that you can use to make your own real sentence.
Nothing stops you from making up a sentence the way I did. You're shown a string of 12 random letters and you will get $1000 if you can repeat them from memory tomorrow. You can't make up a weird memorable sentence in a few minutes with $1000 on offer? Idk about you, but most of us could use the extra $1000 and would jump at the chance.
The OP was asking about a passphrase that gets 1 word longer each day. Have you tested yourself at all? You might look up "memory palace" for techniques of doing that sort of thing. 5000 words is impressive, 50 is no big deal at all. Change your Lemmy password to a 5 word random phrase (write it down) and log in a few times a day with it. You will remember it without referring to the paper pretty quickly. Do that 10 times with different phrases and there is your 50.
I don't know what else to tell you since it's obviously only answerable empirically, and even given a demonstration you would probably just claim that the person was an unusual freak. I don't claim that literally everyone could do it (some people are just hopelessly forgetful). But IMHO it's very doable in general.
I just addressed that.......
That's not what OP is asking. OP is saying that every day you'll get a random word, not a letter. It's not the next word in a sentence/paragraph - just a random word. You cannot use the same trick of making a sentence using the letters you have to remember as the first letter of each word, because you are being given the words you have to remember.
To believe that most people could remember 50 random words, in the correct order, is absurd. There are plenty of sources saying that the average person can remember less than 10, even when talking about random numbers instead of words. It has been studied for decades, if not over a hundred years by now, and the closest you'll get to a consensus of the number of words or even numbers people can just remember in their short term memory is .......... drumroll...........7!
https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/experience_jaune03.html
https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/number-memory
https://glossary.psywellpath.com/exploring-memory-span-how-much-can-we-remember#real-life-examples
https://www.englishclub.com/efl/podcasts/interesting-facts/working-memory/
https://yoursagetip.com/questions/how-many-words-can-the-human-brain-memorize/
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/brain-memory-magic-number/story?id=9189664
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_span
I doubt there is even a single person here on Lemmy that would be able to get even remotely close to 100 words. Maybe 1 or 2 could hit 50......but highly unlikely.
This has nothing to do with short term memory. You only get one new word per day. You get to add it to the earlier words and spend hours practicing the new phrase, writing it out, etc. Then you go in the next day, recite it, get a new word to add on. [Edit: re-reading the original post, maybe you don't get to write it down, but that's ok].
Do you know your own phone number, license plate, birthdate, address, SSN, credit card number, and so on? Some subset of the same basic info about your friends and family? It's all pretty random and comes to about the same thing.
I do think people rely on computers and smart phones more instead of remembering stuff. I'm old, went to school before everyone had mobile phones and computers, you had a land phone at home and it didn't store any numbers-you had to manually dial them. So you used the phone a lot more for stuff that you'd text or email today, and you'd manually dial the number. After you dial someone's number a few times you'd remember it. So you probably knew a few dozen phone numbers by memory. At best similar to a comparable number of words.
Also, maybe more people are having trouble. Microplastics? Covid? Who knows. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-sharp-memory-problems-adults.html
It has everything to do with short term memory. These words wouldn’t be getting committed to long term memory lol
I also grew up before mobile phones and the internet.
Of course they are going to long term memory. You have to repeat them the next day, remember?
That’s not long term memory lol
I think you're using an unusual concept of the term. I give you 5 words with an offer of $1K if you can repeat them to me tomorrow, so you put some effort into memorizing them for that. You're telling me that's short term memory? I don't think so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory
"For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recited. The duration of short-term memory (absent rehearsal or active maintenance) is estimated to be on the order of seconds."