starting

the results
staring, string, sting, sing, sin, in, I

Great! You got down to one letter, much better than I was able to do.

You’re talking about word pyramids. Long ago, they used to be among the pencil puzzles in the daily newspaper. They’re usually additive, not subtractive, but they work out either way. Here’s a website for making them in the 21st century. You’ll find more if you Google the term.

Since the idea was apparently new to you, you get credit for your inventiveness, even if you weren’t the first. Good job.

Thanks for the link. There is a difference between my puzzle and a word pyramid. It is easier to explain going backwards. Once you remove a letter, you can’t rearrange the rest of the letters. If you check @Forever_Free ’ s example, that rule is followed.

I remember working on puzzles where you are asked to change one word into another one letter at a time. These puzzles can be fairly challenging, even for short words.

The example I thought of, going from 8 letters to 5 letters, is:
thorough
through
though
tough

It just struck me as interesting how you could progress from one word to the next.