Yes it's 24. Here is why:
ABCDE
-FGHI
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11111
It's clear that there can't be any "borrowing"
in the subtraction.
It's clear that A can only be 1.
So B-F = C-G = D-H = E-I = 1 and:
{(B,F),(C,G),(D,H),(E,I)} c {(3,2),(4,3),(5,4),(6,5),(7,6),(8,7),(9,8)}
We can't use (8,7) because then we'd have to use (6,5), and (4,3), but
that wouldn't allow us to use 9 or 2.
So we can only use (9,8), (7,6), (5,4) and (3,2)
Here is the smallest possibility:
13579
-2468
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11111
There are 4!=24 ways to rearrange the last 4
columns that go after the first one. The
first column can only be:
1
_
1
Then there are 4!=24 ways we can arrange these 4
column after it:
3, 5, 7, 9
2, 4, 6, 8
-, -, -, -
1, 1, 1, 1
Edwin