As much fun as it was trying to use the major memory system to try think of bizarre images to remember the facts "on sight" I think I'd rather invest in learning and practicing some mental tricks to do more of the math as computation and leave "sight facts" to the what remains. So what should be easy to compute?
Well, 11s for one easy case.
Here's a grab bag of tricks, which covers 9s, 5, and supposedly any power of 2, but honestly trying to turn 14 X 32 into (14 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 X 2) is a little unwieldy, but the idea is a really good short-cut and allows me to think about using other powers as well.
Also, a wikibook offers the following fun trick:
Let's say you are multiplying two numbers, just two two-digit numbers for now (though the rules could be adapted for others) which start with the same digit and the sum of their unit digits is 10. For example, 87×83 (sum of unit digits: 7+3=10). You multiply the first digit by one more than itself (8×9 = 72). Then multiply the second digits together (7×3 = 21). Then stick the first answer at the start of the second to get the answer (7221). A simple proof of how this works is given in the Wikipedia article on Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha's Vedic mathematics. If the result from the multiplication of the unit digits is less than 10, simply add a zero in front of the number (i.e., 9 becomes 09). For example, 59×51 is equal to [5×6][9×1] which equals [30][09]. Thus 59×51 = 3009.
Lastly, on this research journey I found out about so-called Vedic Mathematics and the Trachenberg System.
All can help me as I slowly (around 5 facts a day) work through the 100 X 100 times table.
