<BEGIN> What a piece of work is a man,
How noble in reason,
How infinite in faculties, in form and moving
How express and admirable in action
How like an angel in apprehension
How like a god!
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet to me,
What is this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me — nor woman neither,
Though by your smiling you seem to say so.

How many sequential appearances of the letters t-e-s-t are there on this page between <BEGIN> and the 2nd appearance of <END>?

Watch out - all counts.
<END>
To avoid ambiguity- scan sequentially from left to right and in the sentence "THIS TEST GETS TROUBLE" you should reach a count of 9: 4 starting with the 1st letter of the sample sentence, similar 4 starting with the fifth plus another one beginning with the eighth letter (the last letter in the word "TEST").

The problem asks "how many sequetial appearances of the letters t-e-s-t are there on this page between <BEGIN> and the 2nd appearance of <END>?". There is no specific qualifying requirement that the letters need be lowercase even though lowercase letters are provided in the sequence "t-e-s-t", but rather due to the phrase "all counts" an implication exists that letters in uppercase are included in the representation of the letters.

The total count, with the inclusion of the capital letters, is 41122.
If uppercase letters are excluded, the elimination of the two uppercase T's and the two uppercase E's in the scope of the text in question, reduces the total to 37332.

Posted by Dej Mar on 2014-12-03 16:09:02