There are 26 letters in the alphabet, number each in order 1-26 (i.e.
A=1, B=2, C=3...Y=25, Z=26).
Separate the number 15284476 into individual letters comprising a
single word.  My question is, what is the corresponding word to solve
this puzzle?

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Request for Question Clarification by rhansenne-ga on 26 Jul 2002 15:55 PDT

Are you sure about the number, because without re-arrangement, the
only two possible 'words are':

aebhddgf
obhddgf

None of which make sense. These are the only two, since '284476'
necessarily results in single-figure characters because any sequence
of two figures is greater then 26. So, the 'word' ends with 'bhddgf'.
Only 15 can be interpreted as '1-5' ('ae') or '15' ('o'). Could you
perhaps provide us with the entire puzzle?

Kind regards,

rhansenne-ga.

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 28 Jul 2002 10:23 PDT

When you say "separate" the number 15284476, do you mean factor it?

The factors of this number are 2, 2, and 3821119 (which I found on a
list of prime numbers).  I tried playing around with these numbers --
converting them into different combinations of letters and rearranging
them -- without success.  But there are many possible ways to convert
these numbers to letters, so perhaps another Researcher would be able
to rearrange them successfully.

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Clarification of Question by denverd-ga on 29 Jul 2002 06:26 PDT

Here are the rules exactly as shown in the puzzle- 

"Step #1: There are 26 letters in the alphabet, number each, in order,
1-26 (i.e. A=1, B=2, C=3...Y=25, Z=26).  Step #2: Assign the numbers
to the letters in the clue answer (say the clue is "BOY" B=2, O=15,
Y=25).  Step #3: Then just add up the letters in each word (2 + 15 +
25 = 42 = BOY),  That's the number for that solved clue."..."To derive
the final answer all you need to do is separate the final number into
individual letters comprising a single word."

The final number I have come up with is 15284476.
 
There are a lot of different puzzles, which when figured out
correctly, will add up to the final number.  There are way to many, &
some of them use clues from previous puzzles I have solved, to list
here.  I have made scans of the pages but do not know how to paste
those on here.

Thanks for everybodys help so far.

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Request for Question Clarification by philip_lynx-ga on 02 Aug 2002 03:16 PDT

Hi Denverd,

as ulu explains in his comments, simply adding the values of letters
to get to your number would give you a very long (and extremly
ambigous) word indeed. If the letter were encoded like this (boy ->
2*27*27+15*27+25 = 1888), you would have a unique solution for each
number. Your number 15284476 would decode to SINTAA. sigh...

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Clarification of Question by denverd-ga on 02 Aug 2002 06:11 PDT

The answer is supposed to be derived from converting the numbers into
their corresponding letters in the alpahabet, where a=1, b=2, c=3,
etc...  Whether each number indivdually = a letter or whether a
combination of #'s = a letter is part of the puzzle.  The numbers in
15284476 should correspond to letters to form a word.  Thanks.

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Clarification of Question by denverd-ga on 04 Aug 2002 09:49 PDT

BOY - B=2, 0=15, Y=25.  2+15+25 (B+O+Y) = 42.

Can you say how 15284476 relates to 15009166?

I'm not sure what you mean.  How can the numbers be combined?  Would
aaa be encoded as 111? or as 3?  Any other rules you are not
mentioning?

It would be very helpful if we could see the puzzle in its exact
original form, including the steps which led to the number 15284476.

Even starting the number count at another letter of the alphabet i.e.
B=1, c=1 etc, does not give a valid word when the letters are kept in
sequence.

Can a letter be numbered twice or more?  For example, A=1 and 27?  Do
we have limits to how large a letter's corresponding number can be? 
(in other words, this is not the word "a," where A=15284476, is it?)

And please, no more references to 111! ;)

Since it is addition and let's say 13 is the average value for a
letter:

15284476 / 13 = 1175729 letters or about 1 megabyte!

Something doesn't seem quite right.

Perhaps you can list an example from previous puzzles that is slightly
more complicated then "BOY".  I would imagine that even 42 has
multiple answers.

Is it a phrase so that maybe 15 28 44 76 all make separate words?

If the additive rule is truly correct then maybe the answer is
the sum of all the letters is some well known book such as
the bible.

Working on ulu's assumption that maybe we should consider the digits
in pairs. I find the following words for 15:

AIDA
AN
BID
CAFE
FACE
FED
GAG
IF
LAB

I can produce a similar set for 28, 44, and 76. However, a quick glace
reveals none that can be combined to yield a common phrase.

Okay, trying to go further...

Assuming you can rearrange the digits to make new letters:
12445678

Possible letters from using the above numbers:
ABDEFGHLNOPQRUXYZ

Consider what vowel combinations can be used:
A,AE,AY,E,EU,O,U,Y

I did not have any luck making a word with the remaining letters, but
it was not an exhaustive search.

This one has been a puzzler.

BOY = 200 + 150 + 25 = 375 ?

This didn't work for me.

Did you try stirrup yet?  I posted the answer in a comment the last
time you posted the question...

s = 15, t = 2, i = 8, r = 4,  u = 7, p = 6.
LetterRip