| 
Nine Letters
There is a common English word that is nine letters long. Each time you remove a letter from it, it still remains an English word — from nine letters right down to a single letter. What is the original word, and what are the words that it becomes after removing one letter at a time?
The English language has at least one nine-letter word that remains a word as each of its letters is successively removed, right down to a single letter. That word is “startling”:
startling
remove the l, and the word becomes: starting
remove one t, and the word becomes: staring
remove the a, and the word becomes: string
remove the r, and the word becomes: sting
remove the other t, and the word becomes: sing
remove the g, and the word becomes: sin
remove the s, and the word becomes: in
remove the n, and the word becomes: I
Related Posts
January 30th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Just for fun - a quick dictionary search program found a few more 9-letter words with this property:
* rowelling, roweling, rowling, rowing, owing, wing, win, in, I
* scrapping, crapping, rapping, raping, aping, ping, pig, pi, I
* sparkling, sparking, sparing, spring, sprig, prig, pig, pi, I
* speckling, specking, pecking, peking, eking, king, kin, in, I
* splitting, slitting, sitting, siting, sting, ting, tin, in, I
* startling, starling, staring, string, sting, ting, tin, in, I
* strapping, trapping, rapping, raping, aping, ping, pig, pi, I
* stringier, stingier, stinger, singer, singe, sine, sin, in, I
* trampling, tramping, tamping, amping, aping, ping, pig, pi, I
* troweling, roweling, rowling, rowing, owing, wing, win, in, I
November 20th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
boring