In a recent Best of Car Talk Puzzler (10.28.18) Ray’s puzzler is about the price of the sort of single digit numerals, the kind you buy at a hardware store to attach to your house so the mailman knows your address.
The answer boils down to the fact that
“twelve” = “eleven” + “two” - “one”
By this I mean the letters in the word “twelve” are exactly comprised of that combination of other letters. To see how it works yourself, write out the words “eleven” & “two” on the same line, then cross out the letters from the word “one”, and you’re left with the letters in the word “twelve”.
The weird coincidence of this puzzler is that it works for the numbers too; i.e.
12 = 11 + 2 - 1 = 13 -1 = 12
How weird is that? I got to wondering if there are any other word/number combinations that match up like that?