Can anyone solve this problem?

Question

What is the next number in this sequence?

52, 28, 33, 63, 73, 23, 56,...

Answer 1

89

The words in that sentence can be translated into numbers by translating each letter to the number it is in the alphabet (a -> 1, b -> 2, ..., z -> 26) and then adding up the numbers corresponding to the letters in each word. Then:

what -> 23 + 8 + 1 + 20 = 52
is -> 9 + 19 = 28
...
this -> 20 + 8 + 9 + 19 = 56
sequence -> 19 + 5 + 17 +21 +5 + 14 + 3 + 5 = 89

Answer 2

42