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algebra b need help.... problem solving.?

Fill in the blank: Type your answer in the box and then click "submit." The daily paper features a word puzzle called "Jumble," in which the letters of a common word are scrambled. For example, the jumbled word might be HARNC. The player's job is to find the original word. Some people are quite quick at this, but if you are not, you might consider a "brute force" solution: write down all the possible permutations of the five given letters. Just one of these will be a real word, and that's the solution to the puzzle. How many permutations are there? Type your answer in the text box. Answer:

Public Comments

1. 5!=120 possible word combinations
2. there are 5 possible letters the first letter can be. Once you've picked the first letter there are now 4 remaining letters for the 2nd letter. once you've picked the first 2 there are now only 3 letters left for the 3rd letter. then only 2 for the 4th and only one for the 5th. this gives 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120
3. You are right, I only looked at the group for a few seconds, and saw the word RANCH. But to solve your problem : Permutation of 5 taken 5 at at time where order matters (the definition to distinguish this from Combination) is simply 5! or five factorial. Even for only 5 letters, you will have to list 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 groups -- or 120 "words". Also, with a group like TSUOH, there is more than one word possible, since this unscrambles to SOUTH or SHOUT, and possibly another word (like THOUS as in "thees and thous")