Enumeration of Words that Contain the Pattern 123 Exactly Once

Enumeration problems related to words avoiding patterns as well as permutations that contain the pattern 123 exactly once have been studied in great detail. However, the problem of enumerating words that contain the pattern 123 exactly once is new and will be the focus of this paper. Previously, Zeilberger provided a shortened version of Burstein's combinatorial proof of Noonan's theorem which states that the number of permutations with exactly one 321 pattern is equal. Surprisingly, a similar method can be directly adapted to words. We are able to use this method to find a formula enumerating the words with exactly one 123 pattern. Further inspired by Shar and Zeilberger's work on generating functions enumerating 123-avoiding words with r occurrences of each letter, we examine the algebraic equations for generating functions for words with r occurrences of each letter and with exactly one 123 pattern.