Alphabetical Numbers
Level
pending
Find a number with its letters in alphabetical order.
Example: "five" has "fiv" in alphabetical order, but not "e".
The answer is 40.
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1 solution
Ideally, we would want to start with one digit numbers. We notice that none of them work (though 4 and 5 are close). We then look at 10s, 20s, and 30s, but all of them start with "t", making it nearly impossible. Finally, 40 works. We can prove that 40 is the ONLY number by pointing out the obvious facts. 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 don't work, and all other numbers have "one", or "five", or another number in their spelling. For example, two million, or thirty million. I know what you are thinking now: "How about forty-million or forty billion, or ...". All of this numbers have -illion in them, which is not alphabetically ordered. That's right. Other than the short blip of illions that don't follow the illion rule (sextillion and septillion which are not alphabetically ordered anyway), every other number has illion (even Nonagintacentillion, Quinquatrigintillion, or Quinquagintacentillion). And even if you somehow find an enormous number on Wikipedia that works (which you won't) it probably won't fit in the answer bar. So just stick with 40. PLEASE!!!!
By the way, in some countries, "40" can be spelled as "fourty", making the answer invalid.