For the longest time, I’ve been trying to turn ‘bread’ into ‘toast’. It’s a word game I play to get myself off to sleep: you try to turn one word into another by changing one letter at a time. Each change in itself has to result in a proper English word and you’ve got to finish it in as few goes as possible.
For example, to turn ‘ham’ into ‘egg’ you could do this:
HAM
HIM
AIM
ARM
ART
ARE
AGE
AGO
EGO
EGG
Did that in 9 moves. There’s probably a faster way. That's all part of the game.
Anyway, while dropping off to sleep, I mostly got lost in the middle of words, randomly calling out things like ‘FLIPS!’ into the darkness, and wondering out loud, ‘BRAST? Is that a word?’ until I fell into dreamland. I’ve done some easier ones - CAR > BUS and WALK > HIKE. If you want to have a go, you should be able to do those in fewer than 10 moves.
Anyway, BREAD > TOAST has eluded me for nights on end. I got from BREAD to FLIES (ew), and going the other way, I’d got from TOAST to READY (which seems appropriate), but I just couldn’t link them up. I figured out that it’s more difficult to shift consonant patterns, especially when your start word has two in a row (BR...) and your target word also has two difficult ones in a row too (...ST), but at the other end of the word. Somehow, you’ve got to switch from CCVVC to CVVCC, and that takes some shuffling.
And then, with something like a fanfare in the night, I actually did it. I actually found a link to turn BREAD into TOAST! Here it is! It took 27 moves, but I think it works! If you can find a quicker way (and one that doesn't bother your neighbours in the middle of the night), by all means have a go at BREAD > TOAST, and let me know.
In honour of this, and in a spirit of self-congratulation, I think I’m going to call this game ‘Word Toaster' from now on. Enjoy.
BREAD
TREAD
TRIAD
TRIED
TRIES
FRIES
FLIES
FLIPS
FLAPS
FLATS
SLATS
STATS
STARS
SEARS
SEERS
SEEDS
REEDS
READS
READY
HEADY
HEAVY
HEAVE
LEAVE
LEASE
LEAST
BEAST
BOAST
TOAST
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