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Lewis Carroll

Happy Birthday – Lewis Carroll

January 27th, 2015 by John Lehet

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).” – Lewis Carroll

183 years ago, on January 27th, 1832, Lewis Carroll was born.  Lewis Carroll was just a pen name.  His actual name was Charles Dodgson.   Although he is best known for two books – “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass“, he was actually a mathematician at Oxford.  In addition to his writings and math, he loved nonsense.  Nonsense in the form of puzzles, riddles and poems, all of which he loved to develop and pass along to others.

One of his favorite type of puzzles was called a Doublet.  In a Doublet, you start with a word and try to form a second word by changing one letter at a time.  Each time a letter is changed, the new word must be a real word (and not just gibberish).  Here’s an example that changes FLOUR to BREAD

FLOUR
FLOOR
FLOOD
BLOOD
BROOD
BROAD
BREAD

Each new word has just one different letter than the previous word in the list.  Here are four puzzles for you to try in celebration of Lewis Carrol’s birthday.   

  1. change SHIP to DOCK
  2. change OPEN to GATE
  3. change CRY to OUT
  4. change LIES to TRUE

These four puzzles are difficult and not necessarily for younger puzzlers.  I hope you enjoy this post. Please pass this onto others who may enjoy it!    Also, click “Like” below if you like it!