Word Ladder

Lewis Carroll is often said to be the inventor of Word Ladder (aka Step Ladder, Doublets and Laddergrams). The solver’s challenge is to change one word into another via a series of steps, changing one letter at a time and without rearranging the order of the letters, so that each step is itself a word. The puzzle is often expressed in the form of a riddle such as, ‘Change MICE into RATS in three steps.’ There may be more than one way in which the puzzle can be solved.

An alternative form of the puzzle gives crossword-style clues to each of the separate steps. These may be presented in a jumbled order so as not to make things too easy! This form of the puzzle has only one correct solution, which the solver must find.