How to remember the geographical positions of the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and their respective capitals Tallin, Riga, and Vilnius? Is there a hidden order in this apparent disorder? Well, I realized naively, by accident, that these countries are ordered alphabetically from north to south, and that this is also the same for the capitals provided this time that we remove the first letter! This trick works in English, in French (Estonie, Lettonie, Lituanie), and in several other languages, but does not work for instance in Polish (Estonią, Łotwa, Litwa).
