How can I use ‘orderby’ => ‘meta_value_num’ to order by the numerical value even if the value starts with a word?

If you look at the 50+ similar questions on Stack Overflow you’ll see that you can only do so with considerable difficulty, and you won’t have a very efficient query once you get it working. MySQL just isn’t built to sort that way, and honestly the sort pattern you want is really very peculiar anyway. It isn’t a normal sort by any standard.

And that is pure SQL. WP_Query is capable of much less finesse– without the application of filters anyway.

Your best approach is going to be to normalize your data on insert, saving the numeric portion to one key and the rest elsewhere. Or force the number to the front followed by some marker like a comma that will let you juggle it back to the end on display.

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