Explanation (which might be wrong, since I’m writing this after banging my head against a wall. Please do correct me if I’m wrong):
In regular numbering systems (i.e., decimal), we exhaust all 10 digits (0–9) before we reach two-digit numbers. The first number to require 3 digits is 10². The first to use 4 is 10³, and so on.
In music intervals, there is no “0”. The interval c’–c’, for instance, is called a prime (1). This has the funny consequence that moving by a fifth and then by a fourth doesn’t land you on the ninth, but the octave (8). Moving by an octave and then another octave gets you to the 15th, not the 16th.
In Excel, shit hits the fan when you need to convert column names (A, B, C…) to numbers (0, 1, 2…). Since we use 26 characters as our ‘digits’, we’re in the hexavigesimal system. Knowing what I told you in the first paragraph, you’d expect the first double-digit column (AA) to be 26. And you’re right.
However, when do we need 3 digits? Which column is colum