Sunday, January 27, 2008

HOWLS:

I have invented a new kind of word puzzle: The “HOWL”, or Homonymic Word Ladder. In an ordinary word ladder, you change one word into another in a series of steps. At each step, you change one letter, in place, to form a new word. In a HOWL, you are also allowed to replace a word by its homonym. Here's a simple example: Build a HOWL from Duet to Pucker:

Duet
Duct
Ducked
Sucked
Sucker
Pucker.

Here's a simple one for you: Build a HOWL from rind to shine.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not so simple (at least for me)!

Rind
Mind
Mine
Dine
Done
Dote
Rote
Wrote
Write
White
Whine
Shine

tobyr21@gmail.com said...

So far, so good. There's at least a five-word HOWL going from Rind to Shine.
- pb

Anonymous said...

My second comment didn't post, for some reason. I found a simpler one:

Rind
Wind
Wine
Whine
Shine

(Do you count this as length 5, because there are five entries, or length 4, because there are 4 changes?)