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The Silver Lining
thesilverlining.com › westbendcares › blog › how-to-create-a-password-thats-easy-to-remember-but-hard-to-guess
How to create a password that’s easy to remember & hard to guess
February 24, 2015 - Pick a memorable word or name and a number that’s the same length as the word and intermix them. "Kennedy" plus "1234567" is now "K1e2n3n4e5d6y7." In addition to these suggestions, mixing upper and lower case letters in your password is always ...
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Instructables
instructables.com › circuits › computers
Make an Easy to Remember Hard to Guess Password : 6 Steps - Instructables
October 17, 2017 - You can see below that the entire hash generated is completely original, without having to remember a different password for every website, you just have to remember one small password and be able to read the name of the website in the address bar.
People also ask

Is it good to have multiple passwords?
Sure it is! My recommendation is to have two or three "main" eight digit passwords, with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. If you only have one password for everything and something happens with it, it would be a hassle to change it.
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wikihow.com
wikihow.com › computers and electronics › internet › internet security › internet passwords and usernames › how to create a password you can remember (that's strong!)
How to Create a Password You Can Remember (That's Strong!)
What is a good way to create a password?
I actually believe using a password manager to generate and protect new passwords is a good practice. This way, you'll only need to worry about the password to access the manager, and it would deal with everything else.
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wikihow.com
wikihow.com › computers and electronics › internet › internet security › internet passwords and usernames › how to create a password you can remember (that's strong!)
How to Create a Password You Can Remember (That's Strong!)
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Bitwarden
bitwarden.com › password-generator
Free Password Generator | Create Strong Passwords and Passphrases | Bitwarden
We all know the drill of setting up an account on a new website—being asked to create a password, and then making sure to include both upper- and lowercase letters and numbers, as well as a special character or two (or three or four). You ponder a moment and type in a password that meets those rules. You’re feeling good about yourself – after all, no one could possibly guess that password! But are you sure the password is strong enough to safeguard your private information? The problem is, even if you design your password to be long and complex, most people will still resort to easy-to-remember characters or patterns, like your birthday or pet’s name.
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Function Point
functionpoint.com › home › blog › make a hard-to-guess password that is easy to remember
Make a hard-to-guess password that is easy to remember | FP
May 26, 2022 - 6 or 7 digits is harder to guess than 4 or 5. Put punctuation between the numbers and characters like this: “bl-54133-ue” or “54.bl.133.ue”. This satisfies the common requirement that passwords have symbols in them (usually punctuation). As well, this can even make it easier to remember ...
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DinoPass
dinopass.com
DinoPass - Simple password generator for kids
Simple passwords only have lower case letters and numbers. They are easier to remember but might also be easier for someone else to guess.
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1Password
1password.com › password-generator
A Secure, Strong Password Generator | 1Password
Random passwords are hard for hackers to guess or crack with a brute-force attack. Hackers know that many people use common, predictable passwords like birthday and phone numbers and will often try those first.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/lifehacks › create long complex passwords that are easy to remember!
r/lifehacks on Reddit: Create long complex passwords that are easy to remember!
January 21, 2023 -

UPDATE: (also added in comments)

I've been using LastPass for almost 10 years now, so I 100% agree that password managers are the way to go to manage the hundreds of different logins that we all have now.

I should have probably clarified this originally, but this suggestion is really for those passwords you can't (or at least shouldn't) store in a password app, like the master password for the password app itself, your network login for work, or the password for your own personal computer. These should also be the passwords that you should probably be changing more frequently as well!

Take a line or two from one of your favorite songs and then use the first letter (or corresponding symbol and/or number) of each syllable.

So for example

"Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" could be represented as

Awlotbsol @W1otbs0l aW10+b$01

etc etc

You may need to write it down at first, especially when you first create or change it and need to enter it twice. But after entering it a few times, all you need to do is remember the line of the song and you'll remember your password!

And for passwords you need to change frequently, just use the next line in the song as your next password!

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mdigi.tools
mdigi.tools › memorable-password
Memorable Password Generator - mdigi.tools
For added security, it is better to add numbers or replace certain characaters with special characaters. For example. 'i' to '!'. Our password generator does this automatically for you and help you keep the password memorable yet strong. Our tool uses the following replacements that you can easily remember: ... You must never share the password hint phrase with anyone or people will be able to guess the actual password.
Find elsewhere
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Microsoft Support
support.microsoft.com › en-us › windows › create-and-use-strong-passwords-c5cebb49-8c53-4f5e-2bc4-fe357ca048eb
Create and use strong passwords - Microsoft Support
A combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Not a word that can be found in a dictionary or the name of a person, character, product, or organization. Significantly different from your previous passwords. Easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess.
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Wikihow
wikihow.com › computers and electronics › internet › internet security › internet passwords and usernames › how to create a password you can remember (that's strong!)
How to Create a Password You Can Remember (That's Strong!)
November 3, 2005 - An easy way to remember which characters were replaced is to replace the vowels of your password. For example, if you want your password to be "NeedleInAHayStack" but your favorite numbers are 2 and 7, you could create the password ...
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AbilityNet
abilitynet.org.uk › factsheets › tips-creating-strong-passwords-you-can-remember
Tips for creating strong passwords you can remember | AbilityNet
Probably my favourite in terms of how to create a seemingly random password that's easy for you to remember, is to take a line from your favorite song or a quote you love and use the first letter of each word. ... Lyric: "If you like piña coladas. And gettin' caught in the rain!" Password: Iylpc&gcitr! Note: With the example above, I have also been able to use the ampersand 'and' symbol (&) and an exclamation mark (!) which make the password even stronger and more difficult to guess or crack.
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Cranky Boss
crankyboss.org › home › easy passwords to remember but hard to guess: one clever trick
Easy Passwords to Remember But Hard to Guess: One Clever Trick - Cranky Boss
May 1, 2025 - Add randomness Throw in a symbol, number, or misspelling: Tpcemb!0ok# Use two different base passwords One for banking/critical stuff, and one for general logins. Change the base every 6–12 months Especially if you suspect anything’s been compromised. Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) Even if someone guesses your password, they’ll be stopped by the second verification step. The easiest passwords to remember are based on something personal and meaningful—like a passphrase or sentence you won’t forget.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/askreddit › what are some easy to remember but hard to guess passwords?
r/AskReddit on Reddit: What are some easy to remember but hard to guess passwords?
November 20, 2013 - ... Pick 2 words, any 2 words, Capitalize the first 2 letters. Put a special character after them or replace an A or E with @ or 3. ... Have part of the website name in it. Eg: holyf0ckingshitreddit, holyf0ckingshitamazon, holyf0ckingshitgoogle ...
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Hivenet
hivenet.com › post › how-to-create-strong-passwords-and-remember-them-easily
How to Create Strong Passwords and Remember Them Easily| Hivenet
Another trick is to replace some letters with symbols or numbers. For instance, you could turn the word "Banana" into "B@n@n@!" or "Sunshine" into "5un5h!n3". This adds complexity without making it hard to remember.
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CISA
cisa.gov › secure-our-world › use-strong-passwords
Use Strong Passwords | CISA
Simple passwords, such as 12345, or common identifying information, like birthdays and pet names, are not safe for protecting important accounts holding personal information. Using an easy-to-guess password is like locking the door but leaving the key in the lock. Weak passwords can quickly be broken by computer hackers. But it’s impossible to remember a unique strong password for every account!
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PCMAG
pcmag.com › home › how-to › security › password managers
3 Simple Tricks for Remembering Strong Passwords | PCMag
November 1, 2024 - Was it Tr0ub4dor&3, or Tr0ub4dor3&? Or maybe Tr0m30ne&3? A passphrase like correct horse battery staple is significantly more difficult to crack, due to its length, but also much easier to remember.
Top answer
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The main problem with passwords is not password complexity, but password reuse (obligatory xkcd). One service leaks logins and passwords, suddenly lots of providers see a surge on account hijacks. Why? Because we humans cannot remember dozens of different passwords, so we create one password for common services, and one for special ones. But most of us will have only one password.

Don't create your own passwords, use a password manager. They can create very complex passwords, one for each service, have plugins and extensions for the major browsers, have strong encryption, cloud backup, multi device syncing, and more. Don't trust your brain to create different random passwords for each service.

Using a password manager means you will only need to know one password - the master one. This password can be written down and kept on your wallet. All the others will be created by the manager, and can contain 128 chars, 10 numbers, 30 special chars, including ĥaŕd-tö-tỹpẽ ones...

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Definitely take Thorium's answer seriously. However, I figured I might as well try to address your actual question too.

You'll hear this all the time on a security board like this, but I'll say it anyway: the answer always depends on your anticipated threat vector. I'll focus on brute-force attacks by people who aren't specifically targeting you (because that sounds like your primary concern), but the situation is much different if someone is specifically targeting you. Let's keep it simple though.

Untargeted Offline brute-force attack

A big reason for high-entropy passwords is to defeat offline brute-force attacks. Obviously offline brute-force attacks are trivially easy if the hacked service uses plain-text passwords (which is a very important reason why you should never reuse passwords across sites). However, what if your password ends up in a dump from a service that uses MD5 for passwords? There are rigs out there that can test hundreds of billions of passwords per second against MD5. The best defense against such an attack is simply password length, and making sure your password isn't on a password list or a simple variation of common password schemes people use.

Even with an offline brute-force against an MD5 password list, an attacker isn't going to just exhaustively search password space. They will start by downloading lists of previously-cracked passwords and trying all of those. Then they'll take a list of the most commonly used password-generation schemes and try those. The "combination of dictionary words" generation phrase is common enough that they may even try that. If so, the question is how long can you hold up? Depends on how many words you have and how many words are in your list. There are 7776 words in the diceware list, so let's use that. That means a 4 word passphrase has approximately 3.66e15 different passwords combinations it can make. At a rate of 200 billion passwords per second (a top-of-the-line hashing rig) it will take 5 hours to search that password space. Here is the search time depending on the number of words in your password:

  • 4 words: 5 hours
  • 5 words: 4.5 years
  • 6 words: 35,000 years
  • 7 words: 270 million years
  • 8 words: 2 trillion years

Of course MD5 is terrible. If your password was leaked from a system that uses more modern hashing methods, even a 4 word password will be effectively uncrackable. However, it's best to assume the worst and, for important services, assume the person on the other end is using the worst possible security and choose accordingly (i.e. assume plain-text passwords or MD5). There are plenty of systems out there that are still using MD5 for passwords.

The unknowns

There are lots of unknowns though, which makes this hard to answer. We've assumed that an attacker has tried to brute force a diceware-like password and is using the exact same password list that you used. Those are a lot of assumptions, and a hacker might not bother or might not have your word list. What if they don't and instead just try an exhaustive search? Assuming an average word length of 5 characters, a 4 word diceware password is 20 characters long. They are doing an exhaustive search so must check all letters and numbers even though you have only lowecase letters (we'll be nice and ignore special characters). Now there are 7e35 password combinations to try (if they want to search all passwords up to 20 characters long), or 1e17 years of computation with a top-notch hashing rig before exhaustively searching the necessary password space. In other words, there is absolutely no chance of your password being cracked. Obviously, no one would even bother trying that. Which is what it really comes down to. Most people who are just trying to crack as many passwords as they can are going to try the obvious answers first. Past a certain level of complexity there is some safety in the simple fact that you are no longer the low-hanging fruit. Of course if someone is specifically targeting you, then all bets are off (another obligatory xkcd).

Still, I'd probably opt for 6 or more words. Also, don't reuse it anywhere.

Regarding disk encryption/password managers

In a comment you mention that your interest may primarily be in selecting a master password for a password manager, or a password for disk encryption. This is a slightly different use-case. Modern password hashing algorithms are designed to be slow and therefore hard to brute-force. However, encryption algorithms work a bit differently and "slowness" is not as important for encryption as it is for password hashing (to some extent too much slowness is even a bad thing). How "hard" it is to brute force an encryption key varies wildly depending on the exact details of the encryption method (so I can't really guess at what that would look like in practice), but comparing against something like MD5 might not be a bad reference point.

An important difference (h/t Michael Kjörling) is that with local disk encryption or password manager you may have control over the cost factor for the key generation process. In this case you can crank up the "hardness", decrease your password length, and find your own acceptable compromise between security, ease of memory, and "how long I have to wait until this thing opens" (i.e. ease of use).

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Google Support
support.google.com › accounts › answer › 32040
Create a strong password & a more secure account - Google Account Help
Your password should be hard to guess. It should not contain personal information like your: ... A strong password protects your Google Account. Add recovery info in case you get locked out. ... Your password can be any combination of letters, numbers, and symbols (ASCII-standard characters only). Accents and accented characters aren't supported. ... Is particularly weak. Example: "password123" ... A strong password can be memorable to you but nearly impossible for someone else to guess.
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Tips and Tricks HQ
tipsandtricks-hq.com › home › blog › how to create strong passwords that are easy to remember but hard to break
How to Create Strong Passwords that are Easy to Remember but Hard to Break
March 23, 2010 - The phrase method is an easy way to remember complicated passwords that are hard to crack. ... Choose a phrase that has numbers.
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Secure Practice
securepractice.co › home
Good passwords are hard to guess but easy to remember · Secure Practice
June 16, 2022 - A good password is one that is easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess. In practice, this means that the password should be unique and relatively long. A helpful tip from experts is to choose a password that is associated with a positive experience from your past—something personal that not many people know about. Effective passwords often include a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.