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If you spell out all the offically recognised names for numbers in English (eg, 'one', 'two', 'three', 'fifty-eight thousand', 'million', but not rubbish like 'gazillion')...
what letters of the standard alphabet would remain unused?
Clue: there are two broad methods to help establish this, one of which involves repetitive tasks, whilst the other is based on etymological logic.
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I'd approach this 'logically' - all numbers are going to be compilations of a small subset of number words - one to twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, hundred, thousand, million, billion. I've eliminated the 'tens' that just have a y on the end, I don't need to worry about 'and' in large compound numbers as it's covered in 'thousand', but I don't know whether you are counting 'zero' as valid. (And if I thought about 0 too long, I could probably come up with a list of 'recognised names' to ask that question about...) Now all I have to do is check each of the 26 letters of the English alphabet to see which are not used in my shortlist. Since I have decided unilaterally that zero is in the list (which makes your 'gazillion' a furphy, Mav  ), I end up with the following unused letters: cjkpq Let me know how close I am. (And BTW yes, I have realised now I could have missed out half the teens from my shortlist as well!)
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I considered gazillion to be a joke, but not all the -illions.
cjkpq
Octillion
Quintillion
sePtillion
... leaving J and K.
k
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You're doing well guys! Before I comment further let me add that I unilaterally eliminate zero ;)
So does anyone have a more etymological approach, or can they find the clues in the above stages towards a solution...?
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So does anyone have a more etymological approach
Well, you are a devil, aren't you, Maverick. ;
You're going to have my head all aclutter with this and I have a busy day ahead of me.
So what are you up to with this "etymological" angle?
Every one of the letters in "etymological" [all different except for "o" and "l"] are included. That's 10 with a remainder of 16. That does reduce the field of investigation a bit.
As for Bridget's "cjkpq" all I can think of is:
Cat Jumps Kitten Prances Qutely. :)
[A handy acronym, perhaps, if Bridget has the right answer. Hey, I'm rooting for you Bridget. Your logic is very impressive -- as always.]
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old hand
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> So does anyone have a more etymological approach
Well, our numbers are Latin when worded and not Greek, so 'k' seems like a good candidate as the Romans are not big on it. And 'j' was a pretty late addition to the alphabet, I think.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Bravo belli, that's getting there. So the final list of letters not found in the Latin-rooted names is...
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In reply to:
If you spell out all the offically recognised names for numbers in English
VS.
In reply to:
let me add that I unilaterally eliminate zero ;)
Kindly make a choice between these two incompatible options, good sir. Either you want all, or you don't.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Is Skewes number not officially recognized?
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nope, that'ud skew the results.
sheesh Vern, you gonna make me dig out my source material now?!
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