Puzzle: Word Pyramids

In the past I’ve written about Lewis Carroll’s Word Ladders as a fun vocabulary puzzle. I picked up a used copy of A Book of Puzzlements and found an example of what I’ll call a Word Pyramid.

Here’s a Word Pyramid that goes from A to BRANDS:

You add one letter at each level, and each level has to be a valid word.

What if you started with I? How far could you go?:

Then, feel free to change the rules a bit:

• What if you could delete one letter or add a letter?
• What if you could rearrange the letters at each step?
• What if you could only add to the front?
• and so on…

Here’s a great final example from the book:

Can you (or your students) figure out the rules to this Word Pyramid?

Sometimes the best form for these puzzles is just to let students play with them rather than giving strict rules. See what they can come up with!