Counting occurence of multiple cells containing data

I have a worksheet that has rows of data, that are made up of blank cells or cells containing a single letter (see screenshot example). The cells I'm interested in are groups of 6 or 7 cells that contain the letters "d", "a" or "n".

I need to count how many of these groups of 6 and how many groups of 7 cells exist in a row. Note that often such a group is followed by cell containing a letter "U", these should be considered as a blank cell (and not counted).

There are also groups of cells containing the letter "v", these should not be counted as well.

Hope this makes sense

How can I use COUNTIF to count the number of groups of cells? I don't want to count the total number of cells containing "d", "a" or "n", but the number of groups of 6 or 7 cells that are in the sheet.

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Counts the total number of cells with the mentioned letters, but then just divides it by 6. This will not return the value I need.

Example: in a row there are three groups of 6 cells containing "d", "a" or "n", and one group of 7. Your formula would return 4.166667 ((6+6+6+7)/6). However, I need it to return either 3 or 1 (depending wether I'm looking for groups of 6 or 7).

Originally Posted by Ron Coderre

EDITED: I'd forgotten to mention what $X$1:$Z$1 referred to!

OK.....I think I have something you can work with.

Using the information you posted
AND
assuming that range is in A1:T17
AND
X1: a
Y1: d
Z1: n

Then

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Does that do what you want?
Post back if you have more questions.

You, my friend, are a genius. Exactly what I needed.

Both your help is very much appreciated.