Did you know that Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland and many other volumes, enjoyed creating puzzles? He has even been credited with inventing a type of puzzle called a “Doublet Puzzle”, which we now call a “Word Ladder”. This one dates back to 1877, from the Lewis Carrol Centre:
I also like to create puzzles, so gave myself a challenge this year – to try to develop my very own word ladder puzzle. There are only a few days left of 2017, so here it is!
This little project turned out to be significantly more difficult than I’d imagined, because I wanted to develop a puzzle for adults; one that includes more than only three letters.
In the children’s version above, by Lewis Carroll, the puzzle starts off with the word “Cat” and ends with “Dog”; changing a cat into a dog. I’ve posted the solution page, including the two middle words. The person completing the puzzle would have started with only the first and last words on the ladder.
From the first to second rung – or step – of the ladder, the letter “a” in the word “Cat” is changed to an “o” creating the word “Cot”. The same principle is applied in the next step, changing the text from “Cot” to “Dot” on the third rung of the ladder.
At this point, it’s easy to see how changing one letter in that word would arrive at “Dog” as the solution to the puzzle. My version follows the same flow, but you have to change 2 letters of the word on each step.
That’s part of what makes this one more difficult. Another additional challenge is that the words in my puzzle are longer. So I’ve included some clues at the bottom of this post.
Lewis Carroll’s word ladder puzzles usually had a theme; each would begin and end with words which were related to each other in some way; in the example above, both cats and dogs were common household pets back in the 1800s.
My puzzle begins with the word “Hawthorn”, a type of thorny shrub or tree, and ends with the word “Regional” – for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. CRPS is a rare disease which causes constant and severe neuropathic pain, sometimes feeling as though one is being stabbed with thorns.
Can I let you in on a little secret? I’ve been trying to think of ways to increase awareness of CRPS – as well as of chronic pain conditions and rare diseases in general – and thought a puzzle could be a fun way to do this!
Instructions for my Word Ladder puzzle:
- The words on the top and bottom of the ladder remain unchanged
- Use a piece of scrap paper to write down your word ideas and attempts
- Scramble the letters at each step – or rung – of the ladder to create new word; you’ll change the order of the letters at each step
- Also on each step of the ladder, change two letters from the word above to create a new word
- Your goal is to get from the word “hawthorn” to the word “regional” in just 2 steps on the ladder
- Good luck!
I’ll post the solution to the word ladder puzzle next week!
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Scroll down for the clues; two each for Step 1 and Step 2:
Second step: First clue = A painful Olympic sport
Second step: Second clue = A long-distance run
Third step: First clue = A type of thought
Third step: Second clue = The opposite of irrational