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Question also mentions "alphabetical order" . 5c2 /5c3 or 6c2/6c3 will give all possible combination for ex -: 'CBA' . But thats not a valid code . I calculated it manually till 4 and guessed 6 to be the answer as 4 gave only 10 codes .

How to tackle this in exam ?
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Assuming n be the number of alphabets we have 2(n-1)+2(n-2) code depending upon they being in alphabetical order.
Now n=8.5 with this. so we need 9 letters. Hence answer is E.
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Question also mentions "alphabetical order" . 5c2 /5c3 or 6c2/6c3 will give all possible combination for ex -: 'CBA' . But thats not a valid code . I calculated it manually till 4 and guessed 6 to be the answer as 4 gave only 10 codes .

How to tackle this in exam ?

Combination is the most efficient way to solve this. 'CBA' will be possible case if we use permutation instead of combination; combination has less number of total cases than permutation and we require less number of cases in this problem in order to rule out 'CBA'.
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how do we know repetitions is not allowed? for example, AA, BB, AB, AAA, BBB, AAB, ABB are all unique?
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A unique code is assigned to all test takers of the GNAT exam on a specific day in a centre. On 12 Jan 2021, there were 32 test takers with the codes. The codes are either 2-letter codes or 3-letter codes in the alphabetical order. How many letters will the centre need at a minimum to give all the test takers a unique code?

A. 5
B. 6
C. 7
D. 8
E. 9

how do we know repetitions is not allowed? for example, AA, BB, AB, AAA, BBB, AAB, ABB are all unique?

This is meant to be implied by the phrase "alphabetical order." However, the wording is imprecise, and I wouldn’t worry too much about this question. It’s essentially a copy of an official GMAT question that explicitly uses the word "distinct": https://gmatclub.com/forum/a-researcher ... 34584.html

A researcher plans to identify each participant in a certain medical experiment with a code consisting of either a single letter or a pair of distinct letters written in alphabetical order. What is the least number of letters that can be used if there are 12 participants, and each participant is to receive a different code?

A. 4
B. 5
C. 6
D. 7
E. 8
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