Fern has to go buy address numbers in her house. But she wants to use fancy ones that write the number out as a word, as in four forty three as opposed to 443. The individual letters cost different amounts, for no obvious reason. She is behind three people at the counter at True Value Hardware who all have the same idea. The first one wants ONE and he's charged $5. The second person in line wants ELEVEN, and pays $13. Fern wants TWELVE. How much does she pay? Explain in terms of the letters she's buying.

Help please! Thank you!
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What do YOU think ?
While we're happy to HELP we wont do all the work for you.
Show us what you have done and where you are having problems..

O+N+E = 5
3(E)+L+V+N = 13
T+W+2(E)+L+V = ?
Each letter has a different price.
So start with ONE, the shortest, and E, the most prevalent.
ONE has to have two fractions - WHY? And which two letters have to have the fractions, in light of how will those fractions affect eleven and twelve?

Well, I thought the E was worth 3 points, and for the ONE it makes since (3+2 = 5) but for ELEVEN (3+3+3+3=12) not 13. I'm confused on how to find the value of the vowel to make each add up the same, I don't think the other vowel (O) really matters, I think every letter but E is valued at 1. 2

E can't be worth 3 because O and N can't each be 1.

So can does have to be a whole number? Or can you do E = 2.5, so O = 2, N=.5. So then when you do ELEVEN would be (2.5*3 = 7.5, L would be .5, V = 3, N = 2) so how would you figure out what letters go into TWO and TWELVE? 1


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I got the answer! TWELVE = 16 0

Nope. You can't have N be .5 in ONE and 2 in the others. Keep working.

THINK of how all 3 have to add up to whole numbers, yet you have an odd number of Es in two, and an even number of Es in one.

Cannot be determined as given.

Let
O=1
N=.5
E=3.5
L=.25
V=1.75
T=unknown
W=unknown

.......... O...N...E
ONE = 1+.5+3.5 = 5

..................E......L.....E.....V......E....N
ELEVEN = 3.5+.25+3.5+1.75+3.5+.5 = 13

...................T.W...E.....L.....V.......E
TWELVE = ?+?+3.5+.25+1.75+3.5 = ?


Since the letters T and W are not used anywhere else and the total is also unknown, their value can be value not previously assigned. The total cost can be anything greater than $9.

If this is a true home work problem you must have not related some parameter.

Quote:

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She is behind three people

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Fern is the fourth person in line. You stated what the first and second person paid. You did not state what the third person paid.

I had a sneaky feeling that we didn't have the whole problem stated, but didn't work it out til just now. I couldn't solve it either, without more than one possibility.

I believe the OP left out the fact that the third person in line bought "TWO." Then you can figure it out using:

"TWELVE" = "TWO" + "ELEVEN" - "ONE"

Note that there is no need to determine the cost of each individual letter.