How many words can you make from the alphabet ...?

Question

You have 26 cards ...
With letters A to Z on it
Without repeating each card, how many words can you make?
The word doesn't need to make sense (eg. You can have 26 1 letter words... and so on)

Do any of you guys get the answer

9642202490600000000000000000

Answer 1

9642202490600000000000000000 must roughly be the answer
i worked it out and as the calculator rounds the numbers to 9dp + Standard Index Form so a few things might be different

Answer 2

If I understood what you mean by "...without repeating each card..."

THE ANSWER IS 26! (26 Factorial)

26 1 letter words plus
26x25 2 letter words plus
26x25x24 3 letter words plus
26x25x24x23 4 letter words...

Which equals:
403 291 461 126 605 635 584 000 000 (0x14d9849ea37eeac91800000)

Thats a lot 403.2915 Billion multiplied by a Trillion!

But if you mean you can't use a card twice then it's a different ball game and I'm not sure the answer. i.e. Once you've counted 'A' as the first word you can't make another word 'AT', because you've used the A card before.

If you can use a letter, or card as you put it, more than once then you can have a word longer than 26 characters, which could include any one letter or any number of letters being used twice or thrice, ad infinitum.

The final answer would be INFINATE.

Answer 3

I agree with JimBurnell's solution above.

You can make 26 one-letter words. That's clear.
You can make 26 x 25 two-letter words; the first letter can be any of the 26 letters, and the next letter can be any of the remaining 25.
You can make 26 x 25 x 24 three-letter words.
And so on.

I agree with ted's numerical solution. I worked it out independently and got the same answer.

Answer 4

5

Answer 5

If you can repeat the cards and there is no bound on the length of the words then you can make infinitely many.

If you cannot repeat the cards then what the other answerers are saying is correct and it gives
1096259850353149530222034276. That's quite a big number.

Answer 6

OK, you have:

26 1-letter words
26x25 2-letter words
26x25x24 3-letter words
26x25x24x23 4-letter words
26Pn n-letter words...

I'm sure there's a formula for summing these up...but i'm not sure what it would be. The number will be HUGE HUGE though.

I think Ted's number is low.

Answer 7

That answer is incorrect.. I think you are misinterpreting the question. You answer shows how many different combinations can be made from the 26 letters of the alphabet, whether it is a word or not.

Answer 8

a good question but you should phone up the people who make up the dictionaries

Answer 9

the power of words

the most destructive weapon that has ever been created is doubtlessly the english language in written form. it probably contains more words than any other language in popular usage; verbs, pronouns, and conjunctions arrayed in an arsenal which matches its beauty only with its practical destructivity. to some, this might be a dramatic statement, but for those with a clear view of history realize that this is untrue. after all, history itself is made of words and is mostly comprised of mass deaths and opposition to such. the knowledge of fire and the knowledge to make the first arrowheads were transmitted by words, sometimes inscribed to ward off the forgetfulness of age. kingdoms rose and fell on the basis of words. the united states itself came into existence with words scrawled on a single paper, which john hancock and many others committed their names in ink as they did their very lives. and it started a war, as words often do. the victors crushed their enemies, and humiliated them, and the losers' only persistance in our memories and history books is that they had the impudence to resist. their legacies were devoured by hungry living words. consider that words which incite laughter are no less fearsome than those in seriousness. humor is inherently cruel, yet inextricably bound to life and happiness, and its absolute necessity is perhaps what makes it so totally virulent. the high art of satire and invective topples thrones and takes the bookish scholar and makes him more deadly than the seasoned warrior. for he too, is a warrior of a kind, using images and symbols to persuade in manners less bold but often more permenant than a jagged knife held to a throat. yet this insight is incomplete without the profound understanding that this brash usage of symbols and language is as much a part of us as our hearts and limbs. roughly thirty-five percent of the cellular structure of our brain is a part of the parietal lobe, which deciphers language and symbols. our most cherished beliefs and innermost feelings are expressed in blood-soaked language; brutal, carrion-bloated language. the gospels say that in the beginning was the word, and jewish tradition claims that the living sacred alphabet was the first creation of the divine, even before most of the angels. and it was with words in this primordial language which the prophets called down plagues and horrors upon the tribes and nations which opposed them. with the word shibboleth were the elect distinguished from the sinners, and mercilessly slain. with words and inscriptions the jewish mystics, and their counterparts throughout the world, called up the spirits of the dead and unclean spirits from the darkness to do their bidding. with words, such as those written in the malleus maleficarum, were they declared heretics by other clergy and strangled to death by the thousands and roasted on pyres. with words the african was turned into a slave, and with words the jew was turned into a stumbling skeleton and then into dense black smoke.

it is this fatal legacy of language, this brutal and benighted aspect of our selves— possibly the true price of our ongoing expulsion from eden— which i herefore invite you to inspect within your own heart, as you inspect within mine.

Answer 10

All of them