--- title: Olympiad: number-word puzzles ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: number-word puzzles ★★★», a lesson of the french course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Big French numbers are little sums in disguise: quatre-vingt-dix-sept is "four twenties, ten and seven", so 4 × 20 + 10 + 7 = 97. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/) / Olympiad: number-word puzzles ★★★ # Olympiad: number-word puzzles ★★★ Lesson 37 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/0/) — Big French numbers are little sums in disguise: quatre-vingt-dix-sept is "four twenties, ten and seven", so 4 × 20 + 10 + 7 = 97. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/1/) — From 70 to 99 France counts in a funny old way: 70 is soixante-dix (sixty-ten), 80 is quatre-vingts (four twenties) and 90 is quatre-vingt-dix (four twenties and ten); Belgium and Switzerland say septante for 70 and nonante for 90, and some Swiss say huitante for 80. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/2/) — Olympiad puzzles love these words because they hide traps: the biggest number is not always the longest word, and vingt hides inside every number from 80 to 99. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/3/) — Picture a French phone number read aloud: "zéro six, quatre-vingt-dix-huit, soixante et onze..." - the French say phone numbers in pairs, so every chunk must turn into exactly two digits. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/4/) — The winning habit is the same as in maths: break the word at the hyphens, decide which parts multiply and which add, and never guess when you can count. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/5/) — Quatre-vingt-dix-sept is a hidden sum: quatre × vingt + dix + sept = 4 × 20 + 10 + 7 = 97. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/6/) — The longest French number name from 1 to 99, counting letters only, is quatre-vingt-quatorze (94), with 19 letters; 97, 98 and 99 have 18. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/7/) — Nonante (90 in Belgium and Switzerland) has 7 letters; quatre-vingt-dix has 14 letters, not counting hyphens, so it is 7 letters longer. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/8/) — The numbers from 71 to 79 are soixante et onze, soixante-douze, ... soixante-dix-neuf, so the only one ending in neuf is 79, soixante-dix-neuf. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/9/) — From 1 to 99, only 21, 31, 41, 51, 61 and 71 contain the word et: 6 numbers; 81 and 91 have no et (quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-onze). - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/10/) — From 1 to 99, 30 number names contain vingt: the ten from 20 to 29 and the twenty from 80 to 99, which all start with quatre-vingt. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/11/) — French phone numbers are said in pairs of digits: zéro six, quatre-vingt-dix-huit, soixante et onze, quinze, quarante is 06 98 71 15 40. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/12/) — Soixante-dix plus vingt-cinq is 95, which in France is quatre-vingt-quinze (80 + 15). - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/13/) — Huitante (80 in some parts of Switzerland) has 8 letters; quatre-vingts has 12, so huitante is 4 letters shorter. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/14/) — Quatre-vingts has an s when no other number follows it (quatre-vingts pommes, quatre-vingts euros), but loses it when one does (quatre-vingt-cinq). - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/37-olympiad-number-word-puzzles/15/) — Every olympiad number puzzle gets easier if you write the digits first, then the words. - ← previous: [English words that came from French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/36-english-words-that-came-from-french/) - next →: [Olympiad: gender-pattern puzzles ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/38-olympiad-gender-pattern-puzzles/) - ↑ back to [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/)