It started simply enough. Douglas M. Simpson passed along a nine-letter word that could be reduced one letter at a time to a single letter, creating a legitimate word at each stage. Startling: starling, staring, string, sting, sing, sin, in, I. Fraser Simpson offered another example: sparkling.
Before long, the mailbag was bulging. Robert Aterman offered drownings: drowning, downing, owning, owing, wing, win, in, I. Linda Lumsden, one of the regulars in The Globe's old Challenge column, came up with stampeded: stampede, stamped, tamped, tamed, tame, tam, am, a. "It brought back good memories," she writes, "and once again I felt my brain on fire."
Peter Coo preferred "to work by 'building' rather than 'reducing,' but still found myself running into dead ends - most of the time. Like Mr. [Fraser]Simpson, though, I found that some reward came from encountering the 'deliciously unexpected,' even in my attempts that didn't really go anywhere. For example, the 'e' in: a, at, cat, scat, scant, secant [a geometrical term] secants."
Coo continues: "I also like this rather short one: I, in, pin, pine, spine, supine." Eventually he found a nine-letter offering: a, at, ate, late, later, latter, platter, platters, splatters. "What I really like about this sequence is that there are at least three other ways it can be done, depending on whether one accepts the somewhat Shakespearean 'pate' (crown of the head), 'pater' (a snooty, Latinate term for 'dad') or 'plater' (an artisan who puts silver and/or gold on dinnerware)."
Pat Tripp similarly observed that it's sometimes as much fun to expand words as it is to reduce them. "As a Scrabble player, it intrigues me to find words which can be added to one letter at a time. The best I have found so far, with respect to achieving maximum points, is quin, quint, squint, squinty."
Mark Richards contributed abridgers: abridger, abridge, bridge, bride, ride, rid, id, I. He mentioned in passing the eight-letter sheathed, "which was neat because it becomes 'sheathe' next. Not many '-ed' words seem able to do this." It's a small club, where clothed mingles unwillingly with loathed.
Rod A. Martin, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, gave his computer a shot at the nine-letter target. He wrote the necessary program, and the machine responded with 56 possibilities. Among them were three that result in O, an interjection linked to the vocative in O Canada. For example, foregoers becomes forgoers, forgers, forger, forge, fore, for, or, O.
The pick of the 56 doesn't rely on a plural or add a "d" for the past tense. Stringier: stingier, stinger, singer, singe, sine, sin, in, I. The route can vary. Singe to sin could go by way of sing rather than sine.
It's tempting to include all 56, but realism prevails. Here are three that don't rely on intermediate words that might baffle even a Scrabble player: prattlers, rattlers, rattler, ratter, rater, rate, rat, at, a; replanted, replated, related, elated, elate, late, ate, at, a; trampling, tramping, ramping, raping, aping, ping, pig, pi, I.
Martin didn't stop there. He tweaked a nine-letter example (glassines) into one with 10 letters. A couple of the intermediate words "are quite obscure," he notes. "Glassines are glazed translucent papers used for book jackets. Glassies are glass playing marbles." But since both are legitimate words, let the 10-count begin: Glassiness, glassines, glassies, glasses, lasses, lases, lass, ass, as, a."
I consulted the dictionary. If a device lases, it operates as a laser. Well of course it does.
Thank you to everyone who burned the midnight oil to create such constructs. The game is now officially ended, and is unlikely to be restarted - on which note, courtesy of Rod Martin, this column may fade away like a horse and rider galloping toward the sunset: restarted, restated, restate, estate, state, sate, ate, at, a.