What do the following words have in common?

spy, babe, tree, wavy, skate, loyal, steep, ponder

Wow, no one has commented yet.. probably because they have as much clue to this one as I do.
I'll just start out with some word associations:
spy: glass, industrial, international, agent, ring
babe: baby, ruth, pig, bottom
tree: house, wood, farm, oak, maple, pine (etc)
wavy: hair, ocean, swirly
skate: board, ice, figure, rink
loyal: dog, honor, faithful, dedicated
steep: tea, slope, angle
ponder: think, mull, pinky, brain

Okay, nothing so far. The words range in length from 3 to 6 letters, and are listed in ascending order, perhaps coincidentally.
The letters used are: A, B, D, E, K, L, N, O, P, R, S, T, V, W, Y. Nothing seemingly interesting there.
Letters from the beginning and end of the alphabet are used in most of the words, so anything related to the sum of the alphanumeric value of the letters (as we have talked about in other puzzles) would appear to be a consideration here. Also, the letters of each are neither in strictly ascending or descending order, alpabetically.

So, while throwing out random ideas sometimes leads to something useful, what I have so far doesn't appear to be very helpful.

What does everyone else think (or at least, what have you tried)?

Posted by DJ on 2003-09-03 13:28:44