June Special Puzzle Edition

from Jody Feldman

Those who are familiar with my books know that, so far, all the published ones contain puzzles that the main characters must solve in order to achieve some goal. And today, because my mind has drifted back to puzzles as part of my process, I bring you a simple puzzle in honor of Smack Dab’s June and/or Six theme.

Changing one letter at a time (and, of course, dropping one along the way) can you morph JUNE into SIX in 6 moves or less?

For example, if I were to ask you to do the same, changing HOG into PIG, the briefest list would include 3 moves: hog - hug - pug - pig.

That’s it from me this month. I’m working hot & heavy on something.
Ooh! How about morphing HOT into HEAVY? I may need to try that soon.

And yep, this is how my puzzle mind works. Taking two pictures or words or thoughts and trying to connect them some way. Which can sometimes be the way I approach plot as well.

By now, you may have guessed that I’m stalling down here because I need to put some space between my puzzle and the answer. So why don’t I just bury my answer to the puzzle in this paragraph? And in my shortest answer, I used five moves to go from June to six: June, tune, tine, sine, sin, six. Your mileage may vary. And now I will just keep typing to further disguise the puzzle answer much like we writers might drop a red herring or context clue or something else in what might appear to be an utterly mundane paragraph so that we mask our spoilers.

The end :)

P.S. Should we morph THE to END as well?