Alexey: I do agree. You are FREE to invent games and set their rules. But then you must NAME each game-version uniquely to avoid confusion. E.g.,
VN-Word-Golf (Single-language. Single-letter replacement),
AS-Word-Golf (English + Russian-with-English-transliteration. Single-letter-delete-add-replace),
SKB-World-Golf (English + Basque. Double-letter-replacement), etc.
and so on, å votre gout!
The rule COMMON to these versions is that each transformed word must be valid in the permitted language(s). I do truly admire your example, which follows the AS-Word-Golf rules so inventively. But, note, the SINGLE step solution:
WORLD -> WORD
also obeys the AS-Word-Golf rules (since the single-letter deletion of L is permitted!!)
You can see that the mathematical precision of Games Theory is a two-edged sword.
Be aware that before solutions to problems are invited in Games Theory, the rules must be spelled out exhaustively and unambiguously, which is much harder than laypersons imagine. Indeed, many experts declare that it's IMPOSSIBLE (except in trivial cases), given the innate ambiguities of language and quirks in formal systems. Even arithmetic is either incomplete or inconsistent: we are forced to choose the former as the lesser evil! (Stephen Blackwell touches on VN's possible awareness of Go:del's Incompleteness Theorems, see Chapter 5, pp 160-1, The Quill and the Scalpel).
And here we face the imponderables of treating Pale Fire as a SOLUBLE PROBLEM. The RULES of the VN-GAME, in which PF is presumed to be an example-problem, are not PRECISELY known or laid out by VN. So Pale-Fire presents TWO problems at distinct levels:
1. Determine SET(s) of plausible rules for PF-type games.
2. For each SET, offer a plausible solution.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Sent from my iPad
SKB: It
also lets you shift languages.
Another reason why I used two languages in
my version of word-golf, was that some of the words (Lord,
Nord, God, Gog, bog, dog, log, slog) existed both in English and
Russian. At least half of these words (God, bog, log,
slog) mean different things* in English and Russian, but sometimes
different words (God and
Bog) mean the same in English and
Russian.
*Lord exists only as
a British nobility title (e. g. lord Byron),
dog means only "Great Dane" in
Russian
Alexey Sklyarenko