Tony Buzan says that “one of the most universal memory failure areas ... is the order of the planets”(“All in the imagination”, Resources, 7 October). Yup, totally agree; no probs with that.

What I do have a problem with is the roughly 217-word aide memoire story that follows. I was taught the mnemonic “My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets”. Nine words. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Still nine words. I can repeat this 24 times in the same word-count as Tony’s story. Why make learning more difficult? Why not just keep it simple?

Teresa Willmore, Burgess Hill, West Sussex.