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]
Word games are spoken, board, card or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.
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.
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.
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, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and released online on the newspaper's website and mobile apps as part of The New York Times Games.
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."
TV Slagalica or simply Slagalica is a Serbian quiz show produced by RTS and airs on RTS1. It is based on Des chiffres et des lettres, a French game show. It first aired on 22 November 1993. at 7 pm. It consists of seven simple mind games. Contestants play for a spot in the quarter-finals, semi finals and then the finals. Contestants win prizes as they progress. It has four female hosts: Marija Veljković, Kristina Radenković, Milica Gacin and Jelena Simić. After the end of each 10th series, winners of each of the previous 10 series', with the addition of 6 runners-up, play in the superfinal using the same system as a regular series. In the superfinal, there is also an additional game played.
"'Tis the Voice of the Lobster" is a poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in Chapter 10 of his 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is recited by Alice to the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon.
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.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician and photographer. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense.
Ethel Margaret Arnold was an English journalist, author, and lecturer on female suffrage.
JuliaHuxley was a British scholar. She founded Prior's Field School for girls, in Godalming, Surrey in 1902.
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. Wordle has a single daily solution, with all players attempting to guess the same word. During 2023, Wordle was played 4.8 billion times.
Connections is a word puzzle developed and published by The New York Times as part of The New York Times Games. It was released for PC on June 12, 2023, during its beta phase. It is the second-most-played game that is published by Times, behind Wordle.
Tracy Bennett is an American editor and puzzle editor. She edits The New York Times Games products Wordle and Strands.
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.
Sam Ezersky is an American puzzle editor and crossword constructor who is the editor of The New York Times Spelling Bee. He has worked for the New York Times games department since 2017.