Since you would see just a bunch of letters, you’d have a hard time remembering more than the first seven or so. But in reality you recognize those letters as a word you’re familiar with—and a thirteen-letter word at that— so you can easily remember all those letters in the correct order. You wouldn’t need to study them for the full five seconds; a half-second would be plenty. Though you’d have to think a bit, you could even repeat the whole string of letters backward.
