Puzzle: Word Ladders

The “Puzzle of the day” was always a hit with the students I worked with. The most consistently successful type of puzzle in my class was the Word Ladder or Doublet, invented by Lewis Carroll in 1877 (allegedly on Christmas Day!).

Rules

In a Word Ladder:

Players get a starting word and an ending word
Starting and ending words must be the same length (PIG and HOG, or CAT and DOG)
Players change one letter at a time, attempting to move from the starting word to the ending word
Each intermediate step must be a valid word, and no proper nouns allowed!

Examples

Here are a few samples. Note that each step is a word and changes only one letter from the previous word.

FLY to CRY

Get from FLY to CRY in one step.

CAT to DOG

Turn a CAT into a DOG in two steps.

CAT
COT (a → o)
DOT (c → d)
DOG (t → g)

MAN to APE

Naturally, they can get increasingly complex. Carroll’s MAN to APE is a famous example that takes four intermediate steps despite how short the words are.

MAN
MAT (n → t)
OAT (m → o)
OPT (a → p)
APT (o → a)
APE (t → e)

I have a whole bunch of video versions of Word Ladders over at Byrdseed.TV.

Done For You!

There's actually a lesson at Byrdseed.TV that's specifically about this article. Check it out

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