Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The Numerology of Casablanca

Suppose you have the following system: each letter of the Roman alphabet is assigned a numerical value reflecting its position in the alphabet, i.e., a = 1, b = 2, ... , z = 26. After calculating any sum of these alphabetical ordinals, you round to the nearest multiple of 10. Consider the following:

t (= 20) + h (= 8) + e (= 5) + u (= 21) + s (= 19) + u (= 21) + a (= 1) + l (= 12) + s (= 19) + u (= 21) + s (= 19) + p (= 16) + e (= 5) + c (= 3) + t (= 20) + s (= 19) = 229 ≈ 230

Hence, you round up "the usual suspects."

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