Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T23:33:14.723Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Word ladders - Lewis Carroll’s doublets*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Martin Gardner*
Affiliation:
3001 Chestnut Road, Hendersonville, NC 28792, USA

Extract

Doublet tasks consist of changing one word to another by altering single letters at each step to make a different word. The two words at the beginning and end of such a chain must, of course, be the same length, and they should be related to each other in some obvious way. They must not have identical letters in the same positions. All words in the chain should be common English words, proper names excluded. A perfect solution has a number of steps equal to the number of places the given words differ. For example: COLD, CURD, CARD, WARD, WARM. If a perfect change is not possible, the best solution is the shortest chain. For playing doublets as a game with two or more players, Lewis Carroll invented a set of scoring rules to determine who wins.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Reprinted from Math Horizons, with kind permission of the Mathematical Association of America.

References

* Reprinted from Math Horizons, with kind permission of the Mathematical Association of America.