Joe wants to find all the four-letter words that begin and end with the same letter. how many combinations of letters must he examine? a word is any sequence of letters, such as mthm, and does not have to be english.

there are lots of ways.   pick's theorem tells us if the vertices are lattice points the area a is

a = b/2 + i - 1

where b is the number of boundary lattice points and i is the number of interior lattice points.

in the figure i count b=16, i=50 so

a = 8 + 50 - 1 = 57

let's try the shoelace formula.   the area is half the sum of the cross products of the sides.  

a(-2,6)   -2(2)-6(-5) = 26

b(-5,2)   -5(-3) - 2(-2) = 19

c(-2,-3) -2(-3) - (-3)(4) = 18

d(4,-3)   4(3) - (-3)(5) = 27

e(5,3)   5(3) - 3(1) = 12

f(1,3)     1(6) - 3(-2) = 12

a(-2,6)

each of the cross products is twice the area of the triangle with the associated side and one vertex the origin. so the area of abo=26/2=13.

area = (1/2) (26 + 19 +   18 + 27 + 12 + 12) = 57

that checks!

120 seems like the most sensible answer.

step-by-step explanation:

if there is only one topping on all caramel apples and there's 120 of them. then all apples should/will be covered in sprinkles. make sense?