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Count the e's

reasoning · GPT-5.4 nano · GPT-4.1 nano · Claude Haiku 4.5 · Claude Sonnet 5

The prompt (verbatim, sent to every lane)

How many times does the letter "e" (upper or lower case) appear in the sentence between the quotes? "Every expense here is measured, entered, and receipted." Reply with the number only.
How scoring works

Every lane gets the identical prompt at the same moment. A small script — not an AI judge — checks each answer against the rule below and stamps it CORRECT or WRONG; the line under each lane shows exactly what the check saw. No partial credit.

This challenge's rule

The output must contain exactly one integer, equal to 15 — an answer that shows its work (several numbers) fails on ambiguity, and the WRONG stamp says so rather than misquoting the model. Scoring strips leading/trailing whitespace and one wrapping pair of code fences or quotes before it judges — content over ceremony. Winner rule: correct → cheapest → fastest.

Prices as listed by OpenAI and Anthropic, July 2026. Costs come from provider usage fields × list prices — nothing is invented.