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Kate spilled black ink on her white dress. Can you turn black into white by changing one letter at a time? Each step must create a valid word in the English language. Kate made the change in 8 steps. Can you do as well ... or better?

blackblankblinkbrinkbrinetrinetritewritewhitetrine is a word, although I wasn't sureThat's 8 steps, I don't know if it can be done faster.

That was an original one...someone I know came up with the following.BLACKBLICKBRICKBRICEBRITEWRITEWHITECheers,Gus

Interesting. I had it done in 7 steps yesterday, using "brite" but I wrongly assumed that brite was not a real word. I was so convinced I never bothered to check!

"black" to "white" isn't hard, try "black" to "quack" for a challenge (and I've given you three letters in place already).I did a little playing starting with Alan Beale's public domain word list (I used the 2of4Brif version). It has 4,479 five-letter English words (British spelling; no abbreviations, jargon or proper names; but a good deal of slang and well-known foreign words like amour and adios). 3,383 of these can be linked to "black," 1,096 cannot. The ones that cannot form a number of smaller, unconnected groups.The shortest "white" to "black" it found was 8 words (including both end points): white, shite, spite, spice, slice, slick, slack, black. The list does not include "trine," "blick," "brice" or "brite."The words with the longest shortest paths to "black" were "retry" and "rogue" at 20 words: retry, retro, metro, metre, mitre, litre, lithe, lathe, laths, maths, mates, males, bales, boles, bolts, boots, blots, blocs, block, black and rogue, vogue, vague, value, valve, calve, carve, curve, curvy, curly, burly, bully, bulls, bolls, bolts, boots, blots, blocs, block, black.The number of words with different shortest path lengths to "black" form a nice bell curve:Path|Number of Words1 | 12 | 43 | 194 | 515 | 916 | 2067 | 3548 | 4149 | 51010 | 62311 | 53012 | 30713 | 13014 | 6515 | 3716 | 2117 | 1018 | 519 | 320 | 2

Aaron, I love your mathematical insight on what apparently is a verbal quiz.If allowed for proper names, I got the following in a quick attempt.0 BLACK1 BLICK2 BUICK (i.e. car brand - not sure if it actually means something)3 QUICK4 QUACKPlease let us know if you have a better solution. (i haven't created the distribution either)Regards,Gus

I wasn't too keen on 'brite' either; seems to be from the same lexicon as 'phat' Aaron's puzzle:blackslackslickspick (as in 'spick and span')spicespitesuitequitequire (paper measurement, 25 sheets)quirkquarkquackIt might not be shortest, but at least this list won't cause a fight over the Scrabble board, which is more than I can say for some (if you're feeling punchy, you could try, for example:...quitequice (collective intake of breath and narrowing of eyes from the gallery at this point)quickquackeliminating a step.)

Given that you start with three common letters, there may well be a MUCH shorter solution, but I suspect it might then be of the sort that will make Aunt Edna stop playing you at Scrabble... another shortcut with crap words:black slackslicksliceslite (its in the OED, but hey, what isn't...)suitequicequickquack

I accept andym's first 12 word solution for "black" to "quack" but not the others. "Buick" is a proper noun (David Buick founded the company and gave it his name). "blick" is German. "quice" and "slite" are not modern English. But "quire" is acceptable. "spick" is borderline, it survives only in one compound word and it's a variant spelling. My solution required 19 steps. Both it and andym's had to replace all three letters that start out correctly.The 12dict dictionaries are good for this kind of thing because they're free and on-line, of course, but also because they are based on English for non-English speaker dictionaries. These dictionaries are not concerned with subtle usage debates or whether they're the most up to date with new words or most traditional with old ones. They just want to help people actually understand the English they're likely to run across. So they include commonly-understood words even if they are technically slang, jargon, foreign words, abbreviations or misspellings. They exclude words that are formally part of English but that most people will not recognize. Moreover you can pick your file with explicit criteria, most on-line dictionaries are very inconsistent.

If you're not happy with spick, we can replace the slick-spick-spice sequence with slick-slice-spice.

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