Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
150
cans
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Lord of the Rings runs about half a million words, and words average around 5 letters, so call it two and a half million letters. How many of those are O? Maybe 1 in 12. A can of SpaghettiOs is packed with little rings, probably around 1,000 of them.
- Trilogy word count
- ~500,000
- Letters per word
- × 5
- 2.5M letters, 1 in 12 are O's, ÷ 1,000 per can
- ≈ 200 cans
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- LOTR trilogy word count (excl. appendices)
- ≈ 481,000 words
- × avg. letters/word, × share of letters that are 'O'
- × 4.79 × 7.64%
- Total O's needed to spell the text
- ≈ 176,000
- Pasta pieces in a 15.8 oz can (hand count)
- ÷ 1,180
- Cans needed
- ≈ 150 cans
Reference cited by Fermi: LotrProject word counts for the LOTR trilogy (481,103 words, appendices excluded); Peter Norvig, 'English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited' (Google Books corpus: 4.79 letters/word average, letter 'O' ≈7.64% of all letters); pasta pieces per 15.8 oz can from a hand count of Campbell's SpaghettiOs (≈1,180 pieces), reported by Nerdist and Mashed.
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