You may have noticed I haven’t posted much in the last few weeks. Truth be told, I’m battling a weird cold/flu combo (at least, it feels like that, anyway 🙂 ), and am only just picking myself up and kinda sorta getting back to normal life.

So, when a word-lover is bored (or has spare time on their hands, or notices an inspiring label or, well anytime), what do they do? Play word games! This one I sort of invented by accident when I discovered one fascinating word sequence, and after that I was on a quest to find more.

If you’ve ever played the Merriam-Webster game Add-Diction, this is the same principle. The rules are 1) you must only add one letter at a time, and 2) all the words you make along the way must be real words, not like ptch for example. And that’s it. You can add the letters anywhere in the word. The goal is to see how far you can take it.

You can start with a one-letter-word, or a three-letter-word, or whatever is fruitful. If you start with a longer word, you might want to explore its letters to see if you could start farther back along the chain. For example, you might think of “fin” for a starting word, but you can actually begin back at “I” and make it “in” and then “fin”.

Also, no subtracting letters. ^That^ doesn’t count as subtracting. That’s “legal”, but “reach, preach, peach” is not. And now, without further ado, here are some of mine that I’ve found, including the one that started it all. Have fun playing with words!

I, in, pin, pine, pined, pinned

a, as, ash, lash, plash, splash

ah, ach, each, peach, preach

rim, prim, prime, primer, primers

I, in, sin, sing, sting, string, staring, starring (or starting)

I, in, fin, find, fiend, friend (my second one and one of my favorites)

And, drum rolls please, this is the one that started it all:

ice, rice, price, prince, princes, princess

 

You probably noticed that many of them could have gone in different directions (like “lash” could have been “rash” which would have opened up “crash”, “trash” or “brash”. Or it could’ve been “sash”, which would’ve opened up instead “slash” “stash” “swash” or “smash”). I just experiment to see which one will take me the farthest. 🙂

What are some that you found? What word games do you play?

I’d love to hear yours too! Please feel free to share them in the comments! 😀

~ Kat