Reduce sentence to four | Python Fiddle

words = 'Hello there'

def letter_count(words):
    return len(''.join(words.split()))

base_nums = {0 : 'zero',
             1 : 'one',
             2 : 'two',
             3 : 'three',
             4 : 'four',
             5 : 'five',
             6 : 'six',
             7 : 'seven',
             8 : 'eight',
             9 : 'nine',
             10 : 'ten',
             11 : 'eleven',
             12 : 'twelve',
             13 : 'thirteen',
             14 : 'fourteen',
             15 : 'fifteen',
             16 : 'sixteen',
             17 : 'seventeen',
             18 : 'eighteen',
             19 : 'nineteen',
             20 : 'twenty',
             30 : 'thirty',
             40 : 'fourty',
             50 : 'fifty',
             60 : 'sixty',
             70 : 'seventy',
             80 : 'eighty',
             90 : 'ninety',
             100 : 'hundred',
             1000 : 'thousand'
             }

def num_to_words(n):
    if n < 100 and n in base_nums:
        return base_nums[n]

n = str(n)
    ret_str = ''

for i in range(len(n) - 1, 0, -1):
        place_value = 10**i
        digit = int(n[len(n) - 1 - i])

if digit != 0:
            if place_value == 10:
                if digit == 1:
                    ret_str = ''.join([ret_str, base_nums[int(n[-2:])]])
                else:
                    ret_str = ''.join([ret_str, base_nums[digit*10], ' '])
                    ret_str = ''.join([ret_str, base_nums[int(n[-1:])]])
            else:           
                ret_str = ''.join([ret_str, base_nums[digit]])
                ret_str = ''.join([ret_str, ' ', base_nums[place_value], ' '])

return ret_str.rstrip()

print words

while words != 'four':
    words = num_to_words(letter_count(words))
    print words

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