NaNoWriMo

A lot of my friends do national novel writing month. Last year were were discussing the possibility of simply writing out numbers (eg: one, two, three, etc) as a NaNo project. I decided to figure out the logic to determine what number you'd have to type to in order to get fifty thousand words. The answer is not fifty thousand, because you have to account for the fact that "one hundred" is two words, even thought it is only one number. Here's the result of my figuring:

1-19 one word per number = 19

20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 are each 1 = 8

21-29 = 18, also 31-39, 41-49, 51-59, 61-69, 71-79, 81-89, 91-99, so 9*18 = 162

Total words for 1-100: 189

101-120 – 3 each, 60 words

121-129 – 4 each, 36 words, also 131-139, etc., 9*36, 324 words

130,140,150,160,170,180,190 – 3 each, 8*3 = 24 words

200 – one word

Total words for 100-200:409

every group of 100 is the same up to 1000, so 9*409 = 3681

TOTAL WORDS FOR numbers up to 1000: 3870

For 1000-2000: one thousand is two more words, 2000 plus the original 3870 is 5870

Repeat 9 times to get to ten thousand (first time prefix number is 2 words) -52,830

That's over the NaNo requirement of 50 thousand words.

To get exactly fifty thousand: not quite possible, but going up to 9748 will get you to 49999 words, so if you start with zero, 9748 gets you to 50, 000 words.

That's my NaNo algorithm for mathematically minded novelists. If you're interested in learning more about NaNo for normal people, the website is www.nanowrimo.org, and the challenge is a fifty thousand word novel in one month.