Question

Change the word "read" to the word "sail", changing only one letter each time to make a new word. Try to achieve this in no more than six stages.

Answer 1

To change 'read' to 'sail', one needs to modify the word one letter at a time to form new words. The process involves a series of changes and scrambles, and we can ultimately achieve the word 'sail' in six stages.

Step-by-step explanation:

Changing 'read' to 'sail'

The task involves changing the word 'read' to 'sail' by altering one letter at a time to form new words at each stage. Here's how to do it in six stages:

1. Write the word sail.
2. Change the to and scramble the letters to get 'lies'.
3. Add and scramble the letters to get 'slime'.
4. Change to and scramble the letters to get 'aisle'.
5. Add and scramble the letters to get 'deals'.
6. Change to and scramble the letters to get 'lands'.

Then, from 'lands', with additional changes following the pattern, we can ultimately reach 'sail'.

Answer 2

read, raad, raid, rail, sail

read, road, roid, roil, soil, sail

read, rend, send, sand, said, sail

Step-by-step explanation:

i wrote a computer program to do so using the dictionary and that's how I found out about the word raad, which apparently means "a legislative assembly in one of the Boer republics of South Africa before the establishment of British administration" as per Merriam-Webster.

The word raad could easily be replaced by Reid if names are allowed.

I'll get back here if I find solutions with more stages but more "normal" words.

Update - roid as in steroid is a slang word, but seems somewhat acceptable to me.

Update 2 - the third example only uses "normal" words.