One Letter At a Time
Introducing the next addictive daily puzzle game.
The English language is a fascinating ecosystem, likely containing more than a million words, according to capitalizemytitle.com. This (likely) well-respected website, of which I’d never heard before Googling, “How many words are there in the English language?” goes on to suggest that English-speaking adults regularly use between 20,000 and 30,000 words. Ed. note: Actual results may vary.
My 20-month-old granddaughter, Nora, is beginning to wade into the English language waters. Two of her initial words are: “bubble” and “butterfly” - I admire her focus on conquering a very specific subset of the English language (that being words that begin with “b-u”), before moving on to other, more challenging combinations. I look forward to hearing “buggy” and “bunny” and “bungee-jump” from Nora in the near future.
The popularity of Wordle, an addictive daily puzzle game purchased within the last year by the New York Times has sparked Rule of Three’s Addictive Daily Puzzle Game division (I’ll bet you didn’t know that Rule of Three’s many business-holdings included a team dedicated to developing addictive daily puzzle games - there’s a lot you don’t know about Rule of Three - we don’t spend all of our time “Securing a beverage (Rule #1); avoiding douchebaggery (Rule #2); and amusing ourselves (Rule #3); no indeed, sometimes we engage in The Dick Van Dyke Show viewing marathons; watch the Jayhawks emerge from three-game losing streaks; and participate in climate change activism (Ha ha! Just kidding, Greta Thunberg - we haven’t actually attended climate change conferences with you, or marched in the streets with you, or screamed at public officials with you, but, if it gets really cold outside, we do put on a jacket, which shows that we’re not entirely ignorant of climate change issues); and think about thinking about beginning to organize financial records for the looming 2022 income tax filing ordeal.
We’re pleased to provide you with a sneak-peek at a game currently in development. The working title is “One Letter At a Time,” and the premise is quite simple: the player is presented with a two-word phrase, such as “Time capsule,” and is tasked with navigating from the first word in the phrase (in this case, “Time”) to the second word in the phrase (“capsule,” in this example), by substituting one letter at a time, endeavoring to accomplish the task in as few steps as possible. Obviously, substituting one letter at a time can also entail adding or removing a letter, inasmuch as the two words in the phrase do not necessarily have the same number of letters.
If I were to attack “Time capsule,” in the course of a One Letter At a Time game, I might substitute an “a” for the “i” in “time,” yielding “tame.” My next step might be to slip-in a “p” in place of the “m,” producing “tape.” A further step might be to plug-in a “c” for the “t,” delivering “cape” - see, I’ve already got the first three letters of “capsule” - Kevin Bacon would be proud of my progress. I’m not going any further with this example, because the team in the Addictive Daily Puzzle Game division might wish to deploy “Time capsule” at some point in the future, and I wouldn’t want to enable cheaters like Lori Laughlin or Felicity Huffman to gain an unfair advantage.
But, now that you know the rules, and are ready for the challenge, let’s jump ahead with a real-world example. The phrase is (imagine I’m whispering it to you in my Allen Ludden voice from Password): “Rule Three.”
Allow me to go first:
Step 1 - Substitute “o” for “u,” yielding “role”.
Step 2 - Substitute “l” for “e,” yielding “roll”.
Step 3 - Add “t” in front of “r,” yielding “troll”.
Step 4 - Substitute “i” for “o,” yielding “trill”.
Step 5 - Remove “r,” yielding “till”.
Step 7 - Substitute “e” for “l,” yielding “tile”.
Step 8 - Substitute “r” for “l,” yielding “tire”.
Step 9 - Add a “d” on the end, yielding “tired”.
Step 10 - Remove “t,” yielding “ired”.
Step 11 - Remove “i,” yielding “red”.
Step 12 - Add “e” after “e,” yielding “reed”.
Step 13 - Add “t” at the beginning, yielding “treed”.
Step 14 - Remove “d” at the end, yielding “tree”.
Step 15 - Add “h” after “t,” yielding “three”.
Woo-hoo! We got it in only fifteen steps - not exactly the six degrees of separation required by Kevin Bacon, but, completed nonetheless. You can quibble with our use of “ired,” but Merriam-Webster appears to recognize it as a tense variation of the word, “ire.” Can you accomplish the task in fewer than fifteen steps? If so, keep it to yourself, no one likes a braggart.
Are you hooked yet on One Letter At a Time? Look for tomorrow’s puzzle, which might, or might not be “Buried treasure,” which will enable Nora to join in the fun. She’s only got about 20,000 more words to learn.
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With a mere 42 weeks until Thanksgiving, so I would like to try “Happy Thanksgiving” as a target for the newly , or soon to be, launched ROT game. Will there be a “help” button, or some “compact us” link? This seems very challenging and somewhat ambiguous.