[meekadn]

How many different arrangements of letters in the word "mortal" can be made?
Thanks

[RickJ]

Been a long time since that class, but I believe that would be 720.

Can someone confirm this? :o

[CroCivic91]

All the letters in the word "mortal" are different (no double "o"s, or anything else), so you can put 6 letters in whatever arrangement you can think of. Imagine if you have 6 spaces for 6 letters as in:
_ _ _ _ _ _

In the first spot, you can put any one of 6 letters. You can choose 1 of 6 letters. You then end up with
X _ _ _ _ _
which means, one spot is occupied with one letter, and there are 5 more free. On the 2nd spot, you can put any one of the remaining 5 letters. That means you can choose 1 of 5 letters for that spot, and you'll end up with
X X _ _ _ _

In the end, it means you can have 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 720 arrangements.

[valinors_sorrow]

I believe that would work mathematically, i.e. if the six letters were six different numbers. However the definition of anagram limits this to only those combinations that make actual words, doesn't it?

Definition of anagram - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

[RickJ]

I wondered 'bout that too... but went with the entire 6 letters since he said "of the letters".

I find no other standard english word with all 6.

When I searched for anagrams of any length within the letters, the only typical english words I could come up with were

Malt, mar
Or
Rot, ram
Tor, to
Arm
Lam, lot

[valinors_sorrow]

Trolam, tralom,roltam, raltom,maltor, moltar, larmot, lormat, lol, for all I know are words in Klingon and it wasn't specified in english either :rolleyes:

[RickJ]

Aah, but now I'm paying attention: It's posted in mathematics; I'm guessing he meant "combinations" rather than "anagrams".

... meekadn, was the number of combinations of the 6 letters your question?

[CroCivic91]

As rickj said, if the combinations of letters have to be words, than this is no question for a "Mathematics" forum.

Also, the original question was: How many arrangements of letters...

[valinors_sorrow]

So the term anagram in the title was the wild goose.

I see now!