There are (41)193 different words containing a single instance of the letter A(41) spots for the A and then a choice of 19 letters, B-T, for each of the 3 remaining spotsSimilarly there are (4k)194−k words containing k instances of the letter AThus we haveN=4∑k=1 (4k)194−k=29679
It strikes me that perhaps a simpler way of doing this is to subtract all the words with no instances of the letter A
from the total number of words possible.
There are 194 words that have no A in themThere are 204 total possible wordsN=204−194=29679
.