Doublets

In 1879, Lewis Carroll (who wrote Alice in Wonderland) devised a “verbal torture” to amuse two young ladies.

Carroll called this puzzle doublets. This is how a doublets puzzle works: You start with two words, both with the same number of letters. You link these two words by interposing other words, each of which differing from the previous word by one letter only. You begin by changing one letter in the first word to create a new word. You repeat this process, changing one letter at a time and creating new words, until you end up with the second word.

Here's an example from Lewis Carroll that transforms APE to MAN:

APE

ARE

ERE

ERR

EAR

MAR

MAN

This solution uses five intermediate words to transfer APE to MAN. Here's a better solution that uses just four words to accomplish the same transformation:

APE

APT

OPT

OAT

MAT

MAN

Here's another example, this time with four-letter words. The challenge is to transform CARD to GAME.

Here is the solution:

CARD

CARE

CAME

GAME

Your turn now! Here are 10 doublets for you to solve:

BALL to GAME

BLACK to WHITE

HEAD to TAIL

CAT to DOG

DOWN to SIZE

FOUR to FIVE

MORE to LESS

GRASS to GREEN

TEAM to WORK

WORK to PLAY

Remember there could be several different acceptable solutions.