Two eggheady facts about the numbers eleven and twelve:
The first is that eleven and twelve are the only numbers in English from one to ninety-nine that contain the letter l. The same can be said of German, with elf and zwölf; and for that matter of Dutch, with elf and twaalf.
The second is that one plus twelve is not only equal to but also an anagram of two plus eleven.
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As an addendum, if we take the cardinal form twelve, turn it into the ordinal form twelfth and then pluralise it we get the word twelfths, which is an English word ending in a consonant cluster containing no fewer than four consonants: /twɛlfθs/.
And four is the most number of consonants you can ever have in a consonant cluster at the end of an English word.
Or is it?
No, it’s actually five, as in angsts – /æŋksts/ –, a word I use in just about every other utterance, as in ‘one of my many twentieth-first-century angsts’.
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(Photo taken in Mayfair in October 2014)