A Bet You Cannot Lose ...

[andy-hughes]

OK, bet someone any amount you want to take off them, that you can speak for sixty seconds without hesitation or repetition, and you will not use any word with the letter 'A' in it.

Fans of Jack Reacher will know this - anyone?

[fiction-factory]

After 99 :
you could go into negatives (minus1., minus2...) but that could be repetition of 'minus'
or hundreds (one hundred,... nineteen hundred...) or millions (one million,... 99 million) then billions... but maybe that's repeating hundreds, millions, billions

Or do fractions (fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth...)

[Jackdaw33]

I'd be interested to know the solution and see if it accords with the stated criteria.

[Old_Geezer]

I suspect whatever you memorise could be inadvertently misquoted at the time and the bet lost.

[andy-hughes]

Thanks for the responses - including the diversions from the main idea.

As fans of Jack Reacher will know, you simply count from one to a hundred slowly, which will take way more than sixty seconds.

The people I have tried it on smiled when I got to about 'six' and they realised what was happening - then I simply stopped and confirmed that you can go up to one hundred without using the letter 'A' or repeating yourself.

[Jackdaw33]

But once you get to 20 you ARE repeating yourself.

[THECORBYLOON]

What about twenty-one and thirty-one for example, with repeated ones?

[andy-hughes]

Jackdaw - // But once you get to 20 you ARE repeating yourself. //

No - 'twenty' is a word, 'twenty-one' is a word, 'twenty-two' is a word, and so on ...