I don't normally do word ladders, but this looks a bit intriguing. If I get both motivated and have some time, I will give it a go.
Cheers

(Word ladder 1)

If you change the P into an O, I could quickly manage TUMOR - HUMOR - MOURN - ROMAN - RADON - DRAIN - BRAIN etc. (as an example). (BTW, tumor, humor, roman and radon are also perfect Dutch words, while 'drain' and 'braindrain' are loan words in Dutch, and 'brain' is first person singular of the Dutch verb 'brainen' (I didn't know we had that short word for the longer Dutch verb 'brainstormen'), meaning 'to do brainstorming'.)


Still impressive, Al.


Makes me think I could've also ruled out inflection of verbs. Luckily, you don't have to be inflicted by all that. However, you may indeed need plural forms to solve the second word ladder with fixed word lengths, I couldn't do without them in any case.

Adri

Adri,

I'm impressed by your vocabulary -- I had to look up several of the words you used and it's supposed to be my native tongue!

I had tried to solve without looking anything up, so I didn't get down to your shortest solutions. (RIBES? BINES? -- yes, I've looked them up now!)

So here are my efforts and comments (hopefully without any typos!):

Ladder 1:

Not sure how I missed the chance to use MUTER -- well done for 5!

I didn't go via TUMOR because I didn't even think of that spelling for it -- I might well have ended up with your answer if I had :-)

TRUMP - RUMPS - ROMPS - ROPES - SPIRE - TIRES - RIDES - BIDES - BIDEN

(Could have used SPORE and RITES instead of ROPES and TIRES)

Ladder 2:

TRUMP - TRAMP - TRAMS - TEAMS - BEAMS - BEARS - BEERS - BEETS - BESTS - RESTS - RUSTS - RUSES - RISES - RIDES - BIDES - BIDEN

By the way, your 12-step solution goes BASIS - BASON, which I think should be BASIS - BASIN - BASON for 13 steps? And I had to look up BASON (archaic word for BASIN!)

Ladder 3:

My solution is a little longer than yours because I didn't consider going down through UM and U to switch to I, so I went RUM - ARUM - ARM - AM - A - I instead... I wasn't sure whether an Atomic symbol would .be admissible (and I never liked U as a colloquialism so I'd not considered that option either...)

Once again, thanks for an interesting puzzle -- I've come across some words I wasn't aware of (or where I only knew another spelling that wasn't the right length...), so I count that as another plus!

Cheers - Al.

This weekend's puzzle is all about digits. Each answer consists of only one digit. Place your answer to each description in the box to the left of the designated description.

      DESCRIPTIONS:
┌───┐
│   │ 1. First decimal of pi.
├───┤
│   │ 2. First prime number.
├───┤
│   │ 3. VI.
├───┤
│   │ 4. First decimal of e (or Euler's number).
├───┤
│   │ 5. First perfect number.
├───┤
│   │ 6. Square root of 25.
├───┤
│   │ 7. Not positive, not negative.
├───┤
│   │ 8. Number of faces of a cube.
├───┤
│   │ 9. Last digit of the number of squares on an International draughts game board.
├───┤
│   │ 10. Number of elements in an empty set.
├───┤
│   │ 11. Pair.
├───┤
│   │ 12. Even prime number.
├───┤
│   │ 13. Square root of the number of squares on a chess game board.
├───┤
│   │ 14. Atomic number of helium.
├───┤
│   │ 15. Number of planets between Earth and Sun.
├───┤
│   │ 16. Square root of the number of squares in the Letter Sudoku.
├───┤
│   │ 17. The name of my team on World Community Grid: top…0.nl.
├───┤
│   │ 18. Name of pointer in C indicating that it doesn't point to any valid object.
├───┤
│   │ 19. Number of Earth's natural satellites.
├───┤
│   │ 20. Smallest semiprime (or biprime).
├───┤
│   │ 21. 1³ + 2³.
├───┤
│   │ 22. Number of legs of an insect.
├───┤
│   │ 23. Sum of two opposite faces on a six-sided dice.
├───┤
│   │ 24. Exit code of the command true, as opposed to false, on UNIX/Linux.
├───┤
│   │ 25. First Mersenne prime.
├───┤
│   │ 26. Base of the binary system.
├───┤
│   │ 27. You cannot divide by ....
├───┤
│   │ 28. Number of faces on a square pyramid.
├───┤
│   │ 29. Number of South Africa's capitals.
├───┤
│   │ 30. Last digit of James Bond's code name.
├───┤
│   │ 31. ... Lake (name of this lake at 46°42'37"N 95°46'43"W, near Five Lake).
└───┘
Copy the 31 digits in the (vertical) column into the (horizontal) row below.  This is the (final) answer.
┌──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┬──┐
│  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │  │
└──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┘
  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Good luck!
Adri

I agree with Sgt. Joe -- interesting!

However, unlike Sgt. Joe, I think I know what the 31-digit number is :-) [And it let me check my assumption about the correct answer regarding a square pyramid, which I assumed to be a solid...]

I admit to using a programming tool to check my hypothesis, rather than pencil and paper... :-)

I can't think of a specific hint that won't allow others to solve the puzzle without reference to the 31 clues already given. Sorry :-(

Cheers - Al.