Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), the author of children's classics "Alice in Wonderland", was also a mathematician.   He was known to his fellow mathematicians as Charles L. Dodgson.  Aside from children's classics, he had also written a number mathematics books.

    He invented the word game "Doublet" which grew popular.  Players were given two words of similar length.  The objective is to transform the first word into the second word by forming successive words of the same length having changing only one letter at a time.  The winner is the one who makes the transformation in the least number of words.  This word game became a favorite when the magazine Vanity Fair ran a contest of the Game of Doublets.
 

Previous

Home

Table of Contents

Next