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By Root 1739 0

on how easily the number is expressible in terms of “landmark” integers — those rare integers that have exceptionally short names or descriptions, such as ten to the trillion, with its extremely economic five-syllable description. Most large numbers, of course, are neither landmarks nor anywhere near one. Indeed, by far most numbers are “obscure”, admitting only of very long and complex descriptions because, well, they are just “hard to describe”, like remote outposts located way out in the boondocks, and which one can reach only by taking a long series of tiny side roads that get ever narrower and bumpier as one draws nearer to the destination.

Consider 777,777, whose standard English name, “seven hundred seventy-seven thousand seven hundred seventy-seven”, is pretty long — 20 syllables, in fact. But this number has a somewhat shorter description: “777 times 1001” (“seven hundred seventy-seven times one thousand and one”), which is just 15 syllables long. Quite a savings! And we can compress it yet further: “three to the sixth plus forty-eight, all times ten cubed plus one” or even the stark “the number whose numeral is six sevens in a row”. Either way, we’re down to 14 syllables.

Working hard, we could come up with scads of English-language expressions that designate the value 777,777, and some of them, when spoken aloud, might contain very few syllables. How about “7007 times 111” (“seven thousand seven times one hundred eleven”), for instance? Down to 13 syllables! And how about “nine cubed plus forty-eight, all times ten cubed plus one”? Down to 12! And what about “thrice thirty-nine times seven thousand seven”? Down to just 11! Just how far down can we squeeze our descriptions of this number? It’s not in the least obvious, because 777,777 just might have some subtle arithmetical property allowing it to be very concisely expressed. Such a description might even involve references to landmark numbers much larger than 777,777 itself!

Librarian Berry, after ruminating about the subtle nature of the search for ever shorter descriptions, came up with a devilish characterization of a very special number, which I’ll dub b in his honor: b is the smallest integer whose English-language descriptions always use at least thirty syllables. In other words, b has no precise characterization shorter than thirty syllables. Since it always takes such a large number of syllables to describe it, we know that b must be a huge integer. Just how big, roughly, would b be?

Any large number that you run into in a newspaper or magazine or an astronomy or physics text is almost surely describable in a dozen syllables, twenty at most. For instance, Avogadro’s number (6×1023) can be specified in a very compact fashion (“six times ten to the twenty-third” — a mere eight syllables). You will not have an easy time finding a number so huge that no matter how you describe it, at least thirty syllables are involved.

In any case, Berry’s b is, by definition, the very first integer that can’t be boiled down to below thirty syllables of our fair tongue. It is, I repeat, using italics for emphasis, the smallest integer whose English-language descriptions always use at least thirty syllables. But wait a moment! How many syllables does my italicized phrase contain? Count them — 24. We somehow described b in fewer syllables than its definition allows. In fact, the italicized phrase does not merely describe b “somehow”; it is b’s very definition! So the concept of b is nastily self-undermining. Something very strange is going on.

I Can’t Tell You How Indescribably Nondescript It Was!

It happens that there are a few common words and phrases in English that have a similarly flavored self-undermining quality. Take the adjective “nondescript”, for instance. If I say, “Their house is so nondescript”, you will certainly get some sort of visual image from my phrase — even though (or rather, precisely because) my adjective suggests that no description quite fits it. It’s even weirder to say “The truck’s tires were indescribably huge” or “I just can’t tell