Offered for your amusement:

[capri0mni]

Two (and a half) versions of a word game that I like to do in my head:

Version one: Word Chains

Object of the game: Transform one English word to another English word one letter at a time; each "link" in the "chain" must also be an English word, with no proper names.

Allowed changes:

1. Swap one letter for another


2. Remove one letter


3. Add one letter


4. Make an anagram, without adding or removing any letters

Here's a an online version of that game: WordChains.com (I stayed awake far too long into the wee hours of the morning, playing this, last night today).

Version two: Doublets.

This one was invented by Charles Lutwidge Dodson (aka "Lewis Carroll"). And as you can imagine, this wordsmith made the game much more (read: "fiendishly") difficult.

He starts off by allowing only the first rule from "Word Chains" -- you can only swap one letter for another; no annagramming, adding or subtracting. So the start word and end word must be the same length. And then he demands that the two words have some clever relationship to each other.

Example: Change HATE to LOVE in three links:
HATE
HAVE
HOVE
LOVE

And here's an online source for some of Lewis Carroll's Doublets

Version Two-and-a-Half (my own hybrid of the two previous versions):

I really like it when the two words have some connection to each other, but the times when I need to play a word game of some sort to keep my sanity (such as being kept on hold on the phone, or stuck in a traffic jam) are the times when I have no dictionary on hand to help me find a perfectly paired match of equal-length words.

So, I like to allow all four rules from "Word Chains," as long as the start word and end word make some sort of sense together (as in "Doublets"). Here are some I dreamt up last night this morning when I should have been dreaming:

STORM

1. STORE


2. STARE


3. STAR


4. TAR


5. CAR


6. CAM


7. CALM

WAR

1. WARE


2. PARE


3. PACE


4. PLACE


5. PEACE

And finally (this one gave me fits, but I was determined):

AWAKE

1. WAKE


2. WARE


3. WARES


4. SWEAR


5. SWEAT


6. SWEET


7. SWEEP


8. SLEEP


9. ASLEEP

Comments

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Do you know Tom Swiftys?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

"I enjoy those a lot, too!" she said, playfully.