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I'm nine, but me is more than three hundred.

You could've been twenty one.

But you are actually around seventeen thousands.

And all of us are more than half a million.

What is my age?

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  • $\begingroup$ something to do with Battle_of_Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans? All together, perhaps the number of combatants neared half a million? $\endgroup$
    – jmbmage
    Sep 26, 2016 at 23:45

1 Answer 1

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This puzzle can be understood by

considering each word as a number written in base 26, with the obvious correspondence of letters to digits ($A\rightarrow1,\dots,Z\rightarrow26$).

I'm nine, but me is more than three hundred.

$I=9$ and $ME=(13*26)+5=343>300$.

You could've been twenty one.

"You" in textspeak is U, and $U=21$.

But you are actually around seventeen thousands.

$YOU=(25*26^2)+(15*26)+21=16900+390+21=17311\approx17000$.

And all of us are more than half a million.

Less sure about this one, but $ALL OF=26^4+(12*26^3)+(12*26^2)+(15*26)+6=456976+210912+8112+390+6=676396>500000$. (Using ALLOFUS would be a more obvious choice, and of course still more than half a million, but so much more that the choice of "half a million" in this line would be weird.

What is my age?

I guess it's

either $MY=(13*26)+25=363$ or $AGE=26^2+(7*26)+5=863$.

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