It’s what you hope your doctor calls you after a checkup.
Then shrink it. Remove one letter at a time, without rearranging the rest, so that after every removal you still have a real, common English word. Keep going until only one letter is left, and that last letter must also be a word.
7 letters → 6 → 5 → 4 → 3 → 2 → 1
💡 Hint
Solve the clue first, then plan from the bottom, since only two words have a single letter. At each step, test dropping an end letter and read what remains.
Reveal answer
HEALTHY → HEALTH → HEATH → HEAT → EAT → AT → A
Step-by-step solution
- The clue points to HEALTHY, which has seven letters.
- Remove the Y: HEALTH.
- Remove the L: HEATH, a stretch of open land covered with low shrubs.
- Remove the final H: HEAT. Then remove the first H: EAT.
- Remove the E: AT. Remove the T: A, the one-letter word.
- Another valid route runs HEAT → HAT → AT → A, so the middle of the chain can vary, but the starting word cannot. Every step was checked in code: one letter removed, order kept, and each result is a common dictionary word.
Why it fools people
The puzzle is hard because we read words as wholes, not as strings of letters. Looking at HEALTHY, very few people notice HEATH hiding inside, because the letters are interrupted by the L and the T is shared. Most solvers also try to cut from the front of the word, where the sound is strongest, when the easiest cuts are often at the end.
Did you get it?
About This Puzzle
Some words are built like nesting dolls: take away one letter and another real word is still standing inside. A few rare words can keep doing this all the way down to a single letter. Finding one is genuinely hard, because there are thousands of seven-letter words and only a handful survive every cut. This puzzle gives you a gentle clue to the starting word, then asks you to prove it works by building the whole chain. You may not rearrange letters, only remove them, so every word in the chain keeps the others in their original order. It’s a good test of patience and of how well you can see words inside words.
How to Think About It
Solve the clue first, then plan the chain from the bottom up. Only two English words have a single letter, so the last step is already decided: you will finish on one of them. Look for a two-letter word containing that letter, then a three-letter word containing those two, and so on. At the top, try removing each letter of your seven-letter word in turn and read what remains. The end of a word is a good place to start cutting, because suffixes such as -Y and -S often fall away cleanly.
Common Traps
The first trap is solving the clue with the wrong word. “Healed,” “cleared” and “normal” all suit a doctor’s visit, but none of them shrinks cleanly to a single letter. The second trap is rearranging letters to force a word, which breaks the rule. The third is a dead end in the middle: some cuts give you a perfectly good word that cannot shrink any further. If a branch stalls, go back one step and remove a different letter instead.
Where This Puzzle Comes From
Letter-removal chains belong to the large family of word games that test how words are built, alongside anagrams and word ladders. The best-known example is the nine-letter word STARTLING, which can be cut down one letter at a time to a single letter. Puzzle writers enjoy searching for new chains, and computer word lists have made it possible to check every step exactly, as we did here.
Try This Variation
Now a shorter one. Start with the six-letter name of a citrus fruit that is also a color. Remove one letter at a time, never rearranging, until only a one-letter word remains. What are the five words that follow it?
Show the answer to the variation
ORANGE → RANGE → RANG → RAN → AN → A. Remove the O, then the E, then the G, then the R, then the N. Each word keeps its letters in their original order, and every step is a common English word.