Word ladder (also known as Doublets, [1] word-links, change-the-word puzzles, paragrams, laddergrams, [2] or word golf) is a word game invented by Lewis Carroll. A word ladder puzzle begins with two words, and to solve the puzzle one must find a chain of other words to link the two, in which two adjacent words (that is, words in successive steps) differ by one letter. [3]
Lewis Carroll says that he invented the game on Christmas in 1877. [3] Carroll devised the word game for Julia and Ethel Arnold. [4] The first mention of the game in Carroll's diary was on March 12, 1878, which he originally called "Word-links", and described as a two-player game. [3] Carroll published a series of word ladder puzzles and solutions, which he then called "Doublets", in the magazine Vanity Fair, beginning with the March 29, 1879 issue. [3] Later that year, it was made into a book, published by Macmillan and Co. [5]
J. E. Surrick and L. M. Conant published a book Laddergrams of such puzzles in 1927. [1]
Vladimir Nabokov alluded to the game using the name "word golf" in the novel Pale Fire , in which the narrator says 'some of my records are: hate—love in three, lass—male in four, and live—dead in five (with "lend" in the middle).' [1]
The game was revived in Australia in the 1990s by The Canberra Times as "Stepword". [6]
Word ladders are often featured in the New York Times crossword puzzle. [7] [8] [9]
The player is given a start word and an end word. In order to win the game, the player must change the start word into the end word progressively, creating an existing word at each step. Each step consists of a single letter substitution. [3] For example, the following are the seven shortest solutions to the word ladder puzzle between words "cold" and "warm", using words from Collins Scrabble Words.
| COLD | → | CORD | → | CORM | → | WORM | → | WARM |
| COLD | → | CORD | → | CARD | → | WARD | → | WARM |
| COLD | → | CORD | → | WORD | → | WARD | → | WARM |
| COLD | → | CORD | → | WORD | → | WORM | → | WARM |
| COLD | → | WOLD | → | WORD | → | WORM | → | WARM |
| COLD | → | WOLD | → | WORD | → | WARD | → | WARM |
| COLD | → | WOLD | → | WALD | → | WARD | → | WARM |
As each step changes only one letter, the number of steps must be at least the Hamming distance between the two words – four in the above example. [10] Lewis Carroll's example has an extra fifth step as the third letter changes twice.
Often, word ladder puzzles are created where the end word has some kind of relationship with the start word (synonymous, antonymous, semantic...). This was also the way the game was originally devised by Lewis Carroll when it first appeared in Vanity Fair.
Some variations also allow the player to add or remove letters, and to rearrange the same letters into a different order (an anagram).
Donald Knuth used a computer to study word ladders of five-letter words. He felt that three and four were too easy and six was too hard. [3] Knuth used a collection of 5,757 common English five-letter words, excluding proper nouns. He wrote a program which showed the steps connecting any two words, or noted that no connection was possible. [3] He found that many word pairs were connected, but that 671 words were not connected to any other word, i.e 'had no neighbours', as he put it. He called these words "aloof", and noted amusingly that "aloof" is itself such a word. [3]
Derived from the Greek word for '5', and "domino", a pentomino is a polyomino of order 5; that is, a polygon in the plane made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge to edge. When rotations and reflections are not considered to be distinct shapes, there are 12 different free pentominoes. When reflections are considered distinct, there are 18 one-sided pentominoes. When rotations are also considered distinct, there are 63 fixed pentominoes.
A crossword is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, as well as Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called "setters" in the UK and "constructors" in the US. Particularly in the UK, a distinction may be made between cryptics and "quick" crosswords, and sometimes two sets of clues are given for a single puzzle grid.
Doublet is a word derived from the Latin duplus, "twofold, twice as much", and is used to indicate a pair of identical, similar, or related things.
A rebus is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+) and the letter "n". It was a favourite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages to denote surnames.
William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in the invented field of enigmatology. After starting his career at Penny Press and Games magazine, he was hired by The New York Times in 1993. Shortz's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the country's oldest and largest crossword tournament.
The wolf, goat and cabbage problem is a river crossing puzzle. It dates back to at least the 9th century, and has entered the folklore of several cultures.
The New York Times Crossword is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times as part of The New York Times Games, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.
Crosswordese is the group of words frequently found in US crossword puzzles but seldom found in everyday conversation. The words are usually short, three to five letters, with letter combinations which crossword constructors find useful in the creation of crossword puzzles, such as words that start and/or end with vowels, abbreviations consisting entirely of consonants, unusual combinations of letters, and words consisting almost entirely of frequently used letters. Such words are needed in almost every puzzle to some extent. Too much crosswordese in a crossword puzzle is frowned upon by crossword-makers and crossword enthusiasts.
Margaret Petherbridge Farrar was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times (1942–1968). Creator of many of the rules of modern crossword design, she compiled and edited a long-running series of crossword puzzle books – including the first book of any kind that Simon & Schuster published (1924). She was considered "the grand dame of the American crossword puzzle."
Wordplay is a game show presented by Jenny Powell and sometimes Jenni Falconer. It aired live weekdays from 23 March to 31 July 2009 on Channel 5 and was axed after only one series.
Vanity Fair was a British weekly magazine that was published from 1868 to 1914. Founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles in London, the magazine included articles on fashion, theatre, current events as well as word games and serial fiction. The cream of the period's "society magazines", it is best known for its witty prose and caricatures of famous people of Victorian and Edwardian society, including artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, business people and scholars.
Pazurgo is a word puzzle which normally takes the form of a rectangular grid with white and shaded squares. Pazurgo includes elements from Crossword puzzles and Word Search puzzles, along with the addition of its own unique elements.
Lollapuzzoola is a crossword-solving tournament held annually on a Saturday in August. Founded in 2008 by Brian Cimmet and Ryan Hecht, it is the second-largest crossword tournament in the United States, and the only major tournament in New York City. The term "Lollapuzzoola" was coined by Amanda Yesnowitz, as a play on the Lollapalooza music festival. Lollapuzzoola 16 took place on August 19, 2023, and was cohosted by Brian Cimmet, Brooke Husic, and Sid Sivakumar.
JuliaHuxley was a British scholar. She founded Prior's Field School for girls, in Godalming, Surrey in 1902.
People Puzzler is an American television game show hosted by Leah Remini and broadcast by Game Show Network. It premiered on January 18, 2021. The show is inspired by the celebrity and pop-culture themed crosswords in People magazine.
The New York TimesSpelling Bee, or simply the Spelling Bee, is a word game distributed in print and electronic format by The New York Times as part of The New York Times Games. Created by Frank Longo, the game debuted in a weekly print format in 2014. A digital daily version with an altered scoring system launched on May 9, 2018.
Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, with feedback given for each guess in the form of colored tiles indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position. The mechanics are similar to the 1955 pen-and-paper game Jotto and the television game show franchise Lingo. Wordle has a single daily solution, with all players attempting to guess the same word.
Tracy Bennett is an American editor and puzzle editor. As of 2022 she is the Wordle editor for the New York Times.
The New York Times Games is a collection of casual print and online games published by The New York Times, an American newspaper. Originated with the crossword in 1942, NYT Games was officially established on August 21, 2014, with the addition of the Mini Crossword. Most puzzles of The New York Times Games are published and refreshed daily, mirroring The Times' daily newspaper cadence.