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The word critics has 7 letters which can be arranged in 7! = 7 * 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 ways. To see this, imagine placing one of the 7 letters in the first slot. Then place a different letter in the second slot (there are only 6 letters left now), then 5 and so on down to 1. We multiply because we must do each of these steps to create a rearrangement of the word critics.

The problem then is that critics contains 2 'c's and 2 'i's, which are indistinguishable. For example, we might count "rtiicsc" several times by switching the places of the 'i's or the 'c's even though we cannot tell the difference in the word. So, we must divide out the repetition, by dividing by 2! = 2 * 1 twice. This corrects the over-counting from the duplicate letters.

So the correct result is 7!/(2! * 2!) = 1260 distinguishable permutations.

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Q: How many distinguishable permutations of letters are possible in the word critics?
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