KM> Is 9.nnn.nnn.nnn (9 billion something) correct?
  > How many characters must the names have?
 Do you have the required Mark V computer?  The title is "The
 Nine Billion Names of God," yes, and if the number is more exact
 than that, it's not specified in the six-page story.  Other info
 is that the monks use "a special alphabet of [their] own," and
 that you must "eliminate ridiculous combinations.  For example,
 no letter must occur more than three times in succession."  The
 program that does the permutations can handle up to ten-character
 names, but a later paragraph says they're not actually doing
 words of ten characters, tho it's not specific at what length
 they stop.  I get the feeling it's nine.
KM> Any limitation on the number of characters in that language (26 okay?)
 We don't know.  We do know that it takes their computer about
 three and a half months working around the clock (except for
 maintenance breaks and a well-timed delay at the end) to run the
 permutations, but not knowing the speed of the system or the
 number of characters they're permutating, or even the definite
 maximum length of the names, I don't think that helps much.
... Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
--- SR 2.00 #1019  -!-  Hesketh Pearson
---------------