Why LLMs Struggle with Counting Letters in 'Strawberry'

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Why LLMs Struggle with Counting Letters in 'Strawberry'Large language models (LLMs) can miscount letters in words, as demonstrated by the word 'strawberry', which has three 'r's instead of two.
Editorial Staff / July 11, 2026 / 1 MIN READ

Large language models are designed to process and generate human-like text, but they can struggle with certain tasks, such as counting letters accurately.

For instance, when asked how many times the letter 'r' appears in the word 'strawberry', many LLMs incorrectly respond with the number two.

In reality, the word 'strawberry' contains three instances of the letter 'r', highlighting a significant limitation in these models' understanding of language.