cat
cot
dot
dog
Is a valid solution. Note that we are allowed to change only one letter at every step. Words must be valid 3-lettered English words and should not be a proper noun or abbreviations. Eg: USA, TOM etc. are not allowed.
Let us look at a tougher example: axe-nun
axe
ace
act
ant
and
aid
bid
bit
but
nut
nun
I found this game very interesting that I wrote a computer program which would randomly give me a pair of 3-lettered English words which I would solve. I found some word pairs extremely difficult, it took a lot of time. But the best part was that, I was improving with time.
I reached a stage wherein I could solve any word pair in less than 10 seconds(Initially I used to take 20 to 30 minutes per game!!! pufff!!!!). I was all praises for my extra-ordinary IQ!!! who can beat me! I am a mega-brain!, I went around posing this question to every I met for the next one week... on gtalk, during lunch, tea. To dad, mom, friends and even my research advisor :-) !!! everyone were startled to see how difficult it was to solve some of the word pairs. I must acknowledge pratima here who spent 12 full hours in solving just the axe-nun word pair :-)
My phd advisor took extra interest in this problem and we started analysing what makes the game difficult for a beginner and what makes "ME" solve it in 10 seconds :-)
The experiment:
Karthik, shashi and chaitanya helped me create an interface to play this game. When it was all up and ready, we invited 20 students to take up this game. Each were given 65 word pairs to solve. Poor guys they played for 4 to 5 full hours....
And what we observed next startled us....
X-axis represents the game number... participants played 65 games and Y-axis represents the time taken per game. Note that time taken during the first five games is more than 15 minutes per game hwwere as after 20 games we see that our participants took less than 30 seconds.
I realised:
* I was not the only one with extra-ordinary IQ
* I was not the only mega brain!
* Every participant took very little time after 20 games.
What do you think is the trick of the trade that our participants learnt which brough down their problem solving time drastically? from 20 minutes to a mere 10 seconds?
Comments invited!!!
