I'd love to take a number and know how many syllables are in it, when spoken in English.

Let's limit this to positive integers which are less than one thousand.

I'm British, so we're going to follow the hundreds column with an 'and' when there are any non-zero digits after it.

The Challenge

• Write some code which will accept a positive integer lower than 1000 and output the number of syllables in the words which represent that number in British English.


• It DOES NOT need to generate the words to represent the numbers, only the number of syllables they contain.


• It's code golf, attempt to achieve this in the fewest bytes.


• Use any language you like.


• The standard loopholes are forbidden.

Test Cases

|  N  | In words                             | Syllables |

|   1 | one                                  |         1 |

|   2 | two                                  |         1 |

|   3 | three                                |         1 |

|   4 | four                                 |         1 |

|   5 | five                                 |         1 |

|   6 | six                                  |         1 |

|   7 | sev-en                               |         2 |

|   8 | eight                                |         1 |

|   9 | nine                                 |         1 |

|  10 | ten                                  |         1 |

|  11 | el-ev-en                             |         3 |

|  12 | twelve                               |         1 |

|  13 | thir-teen                            |         2 |

|  14 | four-teen                            |         2 |

|  17 | se-ven-teen                          |         3 |

|  20 | twen-ty                              |         2 |

|  21 | twen-ty one                          |         3 |

|  42 | four-ty two                          |         3 |

|  73 | sev-en-ty three                      |         4 |

|  77 | sev-en-ty sev-en                     |         5 |

| 100 | one hund-red                         |         3 |

| 110 | one hund-red and ten                 |         5 |

| 111 | one hund-red and el-ev-en            |         7 |

| 555 | five hund-red and fif-ty five        |         7 |

| 700 | sev-en hund-red                      |         4 |

| 770 | sev-en hund-red and sev-en-ty        |         8 |

| 777 | sev-en hund-red and sev-en-ty sev-en |        10 |

| 999 | nine hund-red and nine-ty nine       |         7 |

Python 2, 112 bytes

f=lambda n:n>99and f(n/100)+3+f(n%100)-(n%100<1)or n>19and f(n/10)+1+f(n%10)or([0]+[1]*6+[2,1,1,1,3,1]+[2]*7)[n]

Try it online!

05AB1E, 34 bytes

т%UεĀy7Q>*}`Iт@3*X_(X20@X12Q(X11QO

Try it online or verify all [1,999] test cases.

Explanation:

With all checks mentioned it will result in 1 for truthy and 0 for falsey.

т%         # Take modulo-100 of the (implicit) input

           #  i.e. 710 → 10

  U        # Pop and store it in variable `X`

ε      }   # Map each digit of the (implicit) input to:

  y7Q      #  Check if the digit is 7

           #   i.e. 7 → 1 (truthy)

           #   i.e. 0 → 0 (falsey)

     >     #  Increase that result by 1

           #   i.e. 1 → 2

           #   i.e. 0 → 1

 Ā         #  Trutify the digit (0 if 0; 1 otherwise)

           #   i.e. 7 → 1 (truthy)

           #   i.e. 0 → 0 (falsey)

      *    #  And multiply them with each other

           #   i.e. 2 and 1 → 2

           #   i.e. 0 and 0 → 0

           #  i.e. [7,1,0] → [2,1,0]

        `  # And push all mapped digits to the stack

Iт@        # Check if the input is larger than or equal to 100

           #  i.e. 710 → 1 (truthy)

   3*      # Multiply that result by 3 (for 'hund-red and')

           #  i.e. 1 → 3

X_         # Check if variable `X` is 0

           #  i.e. 10 → 0 (falsey)

  (        # And negate that (to remove 'and')

           #  i.e. 0 → 0

X20@       # Check if variable `X` is larger than or equal to 20 (for '-ty')

           #  i.e. 10 → 0 (falsey)

X12Q       # Check if variable `X` is exactly 12

           #  i.e. 10 → 0 (falsey)

    (      # And negate that (to remove 'teen')

           #  i.e. 0 → 0

X11Q       # Check if variable `X` is exactly 11 (for 'el-ev-en' minus 'one one')

           #  i.e. 10 → 0 (falsey)

O          # Sum everything on the stack (and output implicitly)

           #  i.e. [2,1,0,3,0,0,0,0] → 6

JavaScript (ES6), 90 bytes

n=>(s='01111112111312222322',n>99&&+s[n/100|0]+2+!!(n%=100))+~~(s[n]||+s[n/10&7]-~s[n%10])

Try it online!

Jelly, 28 25 23 bytes

9ḊŻ;2+⁵Żċ%ȷ2$ạDṠḄƊ+Dċ7Ɗ

Try it online!

How it works

9ḊŻ;2+⁵Żċ%ȷ2$ạDṠḄƊ+Dċ7Ɗ  Main link. Argument: n (integer in [1, ..., 999])



9                        Set the return value to 9.

 Ḋ                       Dequeue; yield [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

  Ż                      Zero; yield [0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

   ;2                    Concat 2, yield [0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 2].

     +⁵                  Add 10; yield [10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 12].

       Ż                 Zero; yield [0, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 12].

         %ȷ2$            Yield n % 1e2.

        ċ                Count the occurrences of the modulus in the array.

                 Ɗ       Combine the three links to the left into a monadic chain.

              D            Decimal; convert n to its array of digits in base 10.

               Ṡ             Take the sign of each decimal digit (0 or 1).

                Ḅ            Convert the array of signs from base 2 to integer.

             ạ           Compute the abs. difference of the results to both sides.

                      Ɗ  Combine the three links to the left into a monadic chain.

                   D       Decimal; convert n to its array of digits in base 10.

                    ċ7     Count the number of 7's.