Weather gage be the boat without the weather gage, especially just before the start or when the boat to leeward can point higher into the wind. "Gauge" and "gage" are often used as alternative spellings. To the extent that there is a difference, a "weather gauge" can be a form of meteorological instrumentation for measuring weather quantitatively, such as a rain gauge, thermometer, anemometer, or barometer. A "gage" is a challenge, and hence an entry into battle, though the word is more commonly embedded in the word "engage". Weather gage The weather gage (sometimes spelled weather gauge) is the advantageous position of
Word ladder the "start word" (synonymous, antonymous, semantic...). This was also the way the game was originally devised by Lewis Carroll when it first appeared in "Vanity Fair". Some variations also allow the player to add or remove letters, and to rearrange the same letters into a different order (an anagram). Donald Knuth used a computer to study word ladders of five-letter words. He believed that three-letter word ladders were too easy (although Lewis Carroll found six steps were required for APE to evolve into MAN), and that six-letter word ladders were less interesting, since relatively few pairs of six-letter words could