Rules
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. For example, the following are solutions to the word ladder puzzle between words "cold" and "warm".
COLD → CORD → CARD → WARD → WARM
COLD → CORD → CORM → WORM → WARM
COLD → WOLD → WORD → WARD → WARM
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.
- Variations
Some variations also allow the following changes at each step:
- Adding a letter
- Removing a letter
- Use the same letters in different order (an anagram).
Read more about this topic: Word Ladder
Famous quotes containing the word rules:
“The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“Let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics.... We have: one, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
“Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints—the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk—we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents.”
—Harry Mathews (b. 1930)