ENHANCED VERSION
INTRODUCTION:
Note: To each of the exercises given below you need to be acquainted with the
following rules with which the original MUTATIS rules were augmented.
Given a word comprising an even number of eight or more letters, solve each
exercise in two stages as follows:
STAGE 1
Rearrange all the letters in the given word into two words with length equal
to half of the length of the given word. Note that the words you use must be
standard American English words or loan word (words "borrowed" from other
languages that have become standard usage).
Example 1:
For simplicity let's start with the eight-letter word "plethora".
Possible solutions include the words "role" and "path".
For this particular example, I easily found three more solutions. Try to do so too.
STAGE 2
Use the two words that you have found as head and tail words to a MUTATIS
word-chain exercise or to a pair of two-directional chains (as specified in the exercises)
according to the following rules.
Note: You may skip these rules if you are already familiar with them from preceding
MUTATIS challenges.
Mutatis is a word-chain exercise game. Given the first and last word in the chain, you are
challenged to fill in "mutant" words according to the following rules:
From the second word on, each word comprises the letters of the word that precedes it except
for one letter that is changed. The order of the letters may also be rearranged.
You may fill in only standard English words and loanwords (words "borrowed" from other
languages that have become standard usage). Slang or colloquial words as well as proper nouns
and adjectives derived from them (that require capitalization) are not allowed.
Example 2:
Given the words start and begin, the following chain demonstrates a possible solution to
the exercise:
start>trait>train>grain>reign>begin
NOW FOR YOUR WEEKLY EXERCISES
For each of the following exercises:
a. Rearrange the letters of each word of the following into a pair of wordsaccording to STAGE 1 of the rules specified above.
IMPORTANT: If the length of each of the two words does not exceed five
letters, the two words must not have any letter in common.
However. for six or seven-letter words, one or two letters may, if
necessary, be shared respectively (at least five must be different).
Exercise 2: deliberation.
SOLUTION OF LAST WEEK'S CHALLENGE
Answer to ex. 1:
palindrome 🡪 rapid🡨🡪lemon
rapid>plaid>pedal>medal>model>lemon
lemon>moles>poles>spoil>pails>pairs> rapid
Other possibilities include:
minor 🡨🡪pedal
pride🡨🡪almon
polar🡨🡪mined
for which I urge you to produce the MUTATIS word chains in both directions.
Answer to ex. 2:
revelation 🡪 viola🡨🡪 enter
viola>rival>liver>lever>never>enter
enter>toner>voter>lover>olive>viola
Another solution:
rivet🡨🡪alone