Previous "Word Meld" puzzles consisted of a pair of words for which to find the shortest sequence of common words, each differing from the previous by only one letter, which began with one word of the pair and ended with the other.

For this problem, find the pair of words that has a shortest solution of maximum possible length.

(In reply to thoughts by Charlie)

Motivating comments Charlie, thanks! Taking a dictionary of 4-letter words, for example, we would create your graph where edges are one letter changes. Then I think you are hunting for some way to find words that are endpoints to one of the graph's diameter paths, yes? Are there nice algorithms for determining a graph's diameter and do these also point to at least one diameter path?

Edited on January 22, 2005, 8:19 pm

Posted by owl on 2005-01-22 20:17:59