All the positive integers starting with 1 are considered in ascending order of magnitude – and spelled out in conformity with the American system, but disregarding hyphens, spaces, commas and, the word "and" - resulting in this infinite string:

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve
thirteenfourteenfifteensixteenseventeeneighteennineteen
twentytwentyonetwentytwotwentythreetwentyfour...........

Determine the 2010th letter in the above pattern. What is the 20100th letter in the above pattern?

(In reply to America has a "system"?? by ed bottemiller)

If you follow the link given in the puzzle, and search within the page for "American", you'll find that the American system differs from the British only when you get to an American billion, which, according to the article, is a British milliard (but I've seen it referred to as just a thousand million). The American trillion is the British billion, etc.

But I think even a cursory estimate of how high you'd have to go to get the the 20,100th letter tells you you won't be getting into the billions, even if you had only one letter per number word. I don't think even the British spell "forty" as "fourty" even if they spell "colour" and "neighbour".

Posted by Charlie on 2010-08-24 11:43:53