Find two words that differ in spelling by only one letter but share no sounds (phonemes) at all.

language/english/pronunciation/no.shared.phonemes New

New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.

Problem

Find two words that differ in spelling by only one letter but share no
sounds (phonemes) at all.

[ Editor: problem statement reconstructed from the postings (thread
"Linguistic puzzle: No phonemes shared." started by jere7my tho?rpe
<jthorpe1@cc.swarthmore.edu>, 1995); the examples given show the
changed letter in the same position. ]

Show solution

jthorpe1@cc.swarthmore.edu (jere7my tho?rpe) writes:
>      Well, that didn't take long...
>
>      The answers posted were:
>
>      ago -> age
>
>      and
>
>      chasm -> chase.
>
>      (The latter is the one I had thought of.)

Oh, and then there's BOUGH and ROUGH.

-- Mike Burke <mtburke@ix.netcom.com>

[ Editor: further material on this puzzle, edited separately from other collected postings (batch 15); it may repeat some of the above. ]

[ Editor: problem as stated there: ]
Find two words that differ in a single letter but have no phonemes
(sounds) in common, such as AGO and AGE.  Who can find the longest such
pair?

[ Editor: problem statement reconstructed from the postings. ]

The answers posted were:

     ago -> age

     and

     chasm -> chase.

     (The latter is the one I had thought of.)

-- jere7my tho?rpe <jthorpe1@cc.swarthmore.edu>, May 1995
   (ago -> age was also posted by <jahowald@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>)

A slightly longer one is TROUGH and THOUGH.

-- Mike Burke <mtburke@ix.netcom.com>

How about TOE and THE.  Short ones should be easy to find.

          SUE     SHE

Who can find the longest such pair?

-- Ralph Craig <rrcraig@unity.ncsu.edu>