--- title: Olympiad: word puzzles — anagrams, palindromes, word ladders — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: word puzzles — anagrams, palindromes, word ladders», a lesson of the english course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Word puzzles treat letters like pieces in a game: you rearrange them, reverse them or swap them, and every an --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / Olympiad: word puzzles — anagrams, pal… # Olympiad: word puzzles — anagrams, palindromes, word ladders Lesson 56 of the english course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/0/) — Word puzzles treat letters like pieces in a game: you rearrange them, reverse them or swap them, and every answer must be a real word. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/1/) — An anagram uses exactly the same letters in a new order: LISTEN becomes SILENT, and DORMITORY becomes DIRTY ROOM. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/2/) — A palindrome reads the same forwards and backwards (level, noon, Nan), and so can a whole sentence if you ignore spaces, capitals and punctuation: "Was it a car or a cat I saw?" - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/3/) — In a word ladder you change one letter at a time and every step must be a real word: COLD, CORD, CARD, WARD, WARM. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/4/) — Picture Kai stuck on HEAD to TAIL at HEAL: the next step is TEAL (a blue-green colour, and also a duck), then TELL, TALL, TAIL; good puzzlers try changing each letter position in turn until a real word appears. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/5/) — An anagram uses all the letters of a word or phrase, each exactly once, in a new order. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/7/) — DORMITORY is an anagram of DIRTY ROOM. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/8/) — A palindrome reads the same forwards and backwards, such as mum, dad, Nan, level and noon. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/9/) — "Was it a car or a cat I saw?" is a palindrome sentence once spaces, capitals and punctuation are ignored. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/10/) — A word ladder changes exactly one letter per step, and every step must be a real word: HEAD, HEAL, TEAL, TELL, TALL, TAIL. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/11/) — "Facetious" (joking at the wrong moment) contains the five vowels a, e, i, o, u in that order, and so does "abstemious". - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/12/) — A pangram uses every letter of the alphabet; "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is the famous one, used to test keyboards and to show what a typeface looks like. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/13/) — A compound word joins two words, like butter + fly = butterfly; a chain of them can go flyover, overtime, timetable. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/14/) — The seven letters of TEACHER also make CHEATER and HECTARE, and shorter words such as cheat, reach, each and heart. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/15/) — A spoonerism swaps the first sounds of two words, as in "a well-boiled icicle" for "a well-oiled bicycle"; it is named after William Spooner, an Oxford teacher who was said to make such slips. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/16/) — "Bruv" is London slang for brother or mate. - ← previous: [Olympiad: the Spelling Bee](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/55-olympiad-the-spelling-bee/) - next →: [Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidden words](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/) - ↑ back to [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/)