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French accents

Source: 2017 SDMO High School Problem 2

November 8, 2017
number theoryprime factorization

Problem Statement

There are 55 accents in French, each applicable to only specific letters as follows:
[*] The cédille: ç [*] The accent aigu: é [*] The accent circonflexe: â, ê, î, ô, û [*] The accent grave: à, è, ù [*] The accent tréma: ë, ö, ü
Cédric needs to write down a phrase in French. He knows that there are 33 words in the phrase and that the letters appear in the order: cesontoiseaux.cesontoiseaux. He does not remember what the words are and which letters have what accents in the phrase. If nn is the number of possible phrases that he could write down, then determine the number of distinct primes in the prime factorization of nn.