Word ladder

[3] Carroll published a series of word ladder puzzles and solutions, which he then called "Doublets", in the magazine Vanity Fair, beginning with the March 29, 1879 issue.

[1] Vladimir Nabokov alluded to the game using the name "word golf" in the novel Pale Fire, in which the narrator says 'some of my records are: hate—love in three, lass—male in four, and live—dead in five (with "lend" in the middle).

[6] Word ladders are often featured in the New York Times crossword puzzle.

This was also the way the game was originally devised by Lewis Carroll when it first appeared in Vanity Fair.

[3] Knuth used a collection of 5,757 common English five-letter words, excluding proper nouns.