Mind Puzzles
One of the most ingenious puzzlers of all time was the author Lewis Carroll. While Carroll is better known for his works Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, he was also a master of word puzzles such as acrostics and double acrostics. In 1879 Vanity Fair magazine
ran a letter from Carroll in which he introduced a new word puzzle
called a Doublet. He described the puzzle by saying, "The rules of the
puzzle are simple enough. Two words are proposed, of the same length;
and the puzzle consists in linking these together by interposing other
words, each of which shall differ from the next word in one letter only.
That is to say, one letter may be changed in one of the given words,
then one letter in the word so obtained, and so on, till we arrive at
the other given word... I call the two given words 'a Doublet,' the
interposed words 'Links', and the entire series "a Chain", of which I
append an example-
HEAD
heal
teal
tell
tall
TAIL
Thus by changing just one letter at a time you can go from HEAD to
TAIL. Object is to complete the Chain in the fewest moves possible.
Here are a few Doublets for you to try: Change TEARS into SMILE. Turn POOR into RICH. Evolve MAN from APE. And make FLOUR into BREAD.
Share your solutions with us and you might set a new record for least
number of moves. Note: All words must be found in a standard dictionary.
