We build "Word Ladders" by changing one letter at a time at each step while maintaining the exact order of letters from the previous word, naturally at each step we have to form a proper word, until all letters of the initial word are changed:

B I G
B I T
B A T
C A T
Let us change the rules.
At every step only one letter may be changed.
Once changed you have to keep that letter.
All letters from the previous word must occupy a new position, in effect we create an anagram of those letters but with one replaced.

S P A N
P A N T
T R A P
R A T E
T I E R

Now, can you change PORE into a medicinal container and DRUM into summer confections that it might also contain? No letters of the original word are to be present in the final one.

Be prepared to offer of your own making too. Maybe add the thought to your Parlor Games list.

A SACK may also be used as a medicinal container (though less so than the VIAL, possibly more so if the medicinal substance is dry, not liquid).
PORE
REAP
PARK
ARKS
SACK **


Permitting the use of the informal ONER [an outstanding person or thing], one might find a sack of these summer confections to be filled (outside the sack, later) with another frozen dessert:
DRUM
RUDE
NERD
ONER
CONE

** If one remembers the medicinal container carried by Saint Benards, a CASK could also be a possible end to the chain. Inside the cask could contain the summer (i.e., omni-seasonal) confection (of a kind) - WINE, which, by using the obsolete word for dung (MERD), we can build the chain:
DRUM
MERD
DIME
MEIN
WINE

----
What might another summer confection be? Again, really omni-seasonal, but when one thinks Summer, one might remember the June bride and the wedding CAKE:
DRUM
RUDE
DEAR
ACED
CAKE

Edited on June 8, 2010, 4:12 am

Posted by Dej Mar on 2010-06-07 02:07:13