Let's Wear Lewis Carroll's Doublet

First, a note of apology: The Postcard Echo Machine has been on the fritz, in that I dropped my postcard-writing pen on its nib, and the replacement pen is delayed in shipping. (The PEM is a top-shelf machine, and requires a special writing instrument.) I'll give the thing a good kick this week, and we'll have postcards flying out the mailbox.

I've been leading the C-O writers on their annual retreat this weekend. With no one at the desk to write this week's feature, it's the Puzzle Page's time to shine!

Here's a type of word puzzle that Lewis Carroll liked to play with. He called them "doublet" puzzles, when he published them. Nabokov liked them, too, and called them "word golf." The aim is to transform one word into another, changing one letter at a time, making valid words at each step.

For example, wart can become rasp like this:
WART - warp - wasp - RASP.
We'll count that as two steps, counting only the in-between words.

So Lewis Carroll challenges you to change cold to warm with just three intermediary words.

When you've smashed that one, here are a few others. You're on your own to find the minimal number of steps.

four to five
wheat to bread
black to white
river to shore
winter to summer

Source: Lewis Carroll, via Marcel Danesi, in "The 125 Best Brain Teasers of All Time."