OK, I understand now. Im not sure I've seen the form you put it in, but I agree its very common for someone to say something to the effect of "Is it 1 r or 2 in strawberry", completely eliding the first r. That makes more sense. I still disagree the posted form gets interpreted as that though : D
Just the nuance of the language. Im saying _statistically_ those scenarios are "Im currently trying to spell a word and Im verbally asking you which is right". Very rarely would that be written in text, and I think its much more likely to be framed as "is there 1 or 2" as the question. I think _statistically_ it is overwhelmingly likely the question as framed is a trivia style question asking for the actual answer.
Statistically I would surmise it's more often asked with a 1 vs 2 framing, because I don't think anyone genuinely was ever asked by another person how many of any character are in any correctly spelled word in written form, because that would be a redundant question, right?
But I suppose to answer this it could help to actually gather statistics on the frequency of either version in texts online.
Think about it: Most instances of such questions are about r vs rr, l vs ll, s vs ss, etc. when people actually ask them.
It's a simple yet overlooked fact.