a word chain solver in c++11

Another chapter in my time-sink hobby of programming puzzles. This time, word chains (transforming a word one letter at a time to reach a destination word). This is something I once thought was trivial: here is a blog post where I fail to complete the puzzle. It bothered me that I never solved this, so I tried to make another go at it in c++11. I think this time I got it. It took a little work to implement this without recursion, but that added a little bit more fun to the challenge.

Seems to work making chains on words I didn't even know could be chained (north,cause), while failing on pairs I thought might have a chain (able,boat). I'd be pleased to hear about it if I am wrong and this is not a solution.

gist

last update 2014-01-22