Word Ladder: Grain to Trait
Read the puzzle
A word ladder of five-letter words climbs from GRAIN at the bottom to TRAIT at the top, changing one letter at each step: GRAIN, BRAIN, ?, TRAIL, TRAIT. Which word fills the gap: BRAID, DRAIN, TRAIN or GRAIL?
Which word fills the gap?
It must differ by one letter from BRAIN and from TRAIL.
TRAIN
BRAIN to TRAIN changes B to T; TRAIN to TRAIL changes N to L.
How to solve it
Step one: the missing word must be one letter away from BRAIN, below it, and one letter away from TRAIL, above it.
Step two: compare BRAIN and TRAIL. The middle letters R, A and I match. The first letter differs, B against T, and the last letter differs, N against L. The gap word must change exactly one of those two.
Step three: try both orders. Changing the first letter gives TRAIN, a real word. Changing the last letter gives BRAIL, which is not an everyday word and is not offered. So the gap is TRAIN: BRAIN to TRAIN swaps B for T, and TRAIN to TRAIL swaps N for L.
Check the other choices. BRAID and DRAIN are each one step from BRAIN, but two from TRAIL. GRAIL is one step from TRAIL but two from BRAIN, since both the G and the L differ.
The usual wrong answers are BRAID and DRAIN, which tempt because they sit so close to BRAIN. Each only matches the lower neighbour. A quick check: the right word shares four letters in place with both BRAIN and TRAIL.
