MUTATIS - word game

Mutatis is a word game, based on the Ladder Game, said to be invented by

Lewis Carrol who was the author of Alice in Wonderland and other amusing creations.

How is it played?

Look closely at the following chain of words:

start>trait>train>grain>reign>begin

Obviously, the words in the chain abide by the following rules: 

• They are all of the same length (five letters in this example).
• They are all standard English words (none are slang or colloquial and none are proper nouns).
• Each word contains all but one of the letters that constitute its neighbor on either side.
• Common letters in neighboring words may be of different order.

Given the head and tail words in the chain, that sums up the rules.

However, as to the second rule, if in doubt about a word, don't use it.

Reference to a reliable dictionary is recommended.

By the way, the following example displays a solution that produces a chain that is two words longer than the chain above:

start>stare>later>regal>anger>grain>bring>begin

That is for two reasons, each adding one word to the chain's length:

The s in the second word was replace by an l, which is not in the tail word begin.

The letter e, which is shared by anger and begin, was replaced by i. 

 There are cases in which such practice is inevitable and it's OK. 

Now for your first challenge that comprises three exercises.

Fill in a chain of five-letter beginning with begin and ending with start. 

NO! Don't copy the string in any example above backwards. Use words that are completely different (Except of course for the first and last word in the chain 😊).

Fill in a chain of six-letter words beginning with photos and ending with camera.  

Repeat exercise 2 in the opposite direction. Needless to say, don't use words that you used in exercise 2!

Printable Mutatis

 

Solution

I intend to publish my results of the exercises in this site one week after they initially appear.

If you wonder why I chose the name Mutatis for this game, it is short for the Latin expression  Mutatis Mutandis which approximately means "changed as was necessary".

It also appears to hint that the game entails the evolution of one word into another through a chain of mutations.