A favorite word puzzleWord for the Wise June 14, 2007 Broadcast Topic: A favorite word puzzle Listeners who love their word puzzles often challenge us by passing along a favorite.
One such puzzle that only recently crossed our desk has in fact been around for decades, but its freshness remains.
(来源：英语学习门户 http://www.
2hzz.
com)Here we go.
Try your hand at guessing the common nine-letter English word that has an unusual characteristic.
If one letter at a time is removed from the word, the remaining (un-rearranged) letters spell out first an eight-letter word, then a seven-letter word, and so on, all the way down to a one letter word.
All the words in this spelldown are ordinary, and the final word is I.
The word is startling .
.
.
that is to say, the actual word is startling.
Strip off the second T or the L and startling turns into either starling or starting.
Remove either the L or the second T and the seven-letter string looking back at you spells staring.
Eliminate the A from staring for the six-letter string.
Then eradicate the R to turn string into sting.
Take away the T from sting to spawn sing.
Jettisoning the G from sing secures the three-letter sin.
Suspend the S from sin and in is in; nix the N from in and I stands all alone.