Turn one word into another, one letter at a time, with every step a real word. Daily puzzle, hints and word meanings. Progress stays in your browser.
A word ladder is a puzzle where you turn a start word into a target word by changing one letter at a time, and every step must be a real word. In FELL to BOOT, for example, you can go FELL, BELL, BELT, BOLT, BOOT. Each word differs from the one before it in exactly one place, and the letters stay in the same positions: you cannot add, drop or rearrange letters. Type your next word under the ladder and press Enter or Add. The letter that changed is marked with a teal tile and a bar under it. Fell and boot differ in four places, so no ladder can be shorter than four steps, and that route has exactly four. A word you have already used cannot be used again. You win when you add the target, and you can reach it by any route, not only the shortest.
Each puzzle shows its par, which is the fewest steps that can reach the target. The game finds it by searching the word graph from the start word, so no shorter ladder exists. Your score starts at 100, loses 10 for each step over par and 15 for each hint, and never goes below 0. FELL to BOOT in four steps with no hints scores 100. Solve it in six steps with one hint and you get 65. Hint adds the next word of a shortest route from the word you are on, so it still works after a wrong turn. Undo takes back your last step, and Give up shows one shortest ladder and ends the puzzle. The timer pauses when the tab is hidden. When the puzzle ends, you see the meaning of every word in the ladder, taken from WordNet.
Words come from a list of common English words with WordNet definitions, the same list as the Crossword Puzzle page, filtered to leave out adult, violent and drug-related words and brand names. The filter is a plain list, not a guarantee. That leaves 176 three-letter words and 597 four-letter words. Two words are linked when they differ in one place, and a puzzle is a pair of words with a shortest route of 3 to 6 steps. The game builds each puzzle from a seed, a whole number. Daily uses the date, so everyone gets the same puzzle that day, and Random shows its puzzle number, and the same number always makes the same puzzle. A puzzle always has a solution, because the target is picked from words the start word can reach. Not every real word is accepted. Plurals, past tenses, names and rare words are mostly missing, so a valid English word can be refused.
Five-letter ladders are not offered because the common-word list is too thin for them. Of the 701 five-letter words in the list, 341 have no neighbour at all, so most of the graph is made of single words, and the connected groups are small. The game only offers a length when it can make at least 100 different start and target pairs for each par from 3 to 6. Four-letter words have 4,379 pairs at par 3 and 14,583 at par 6, and three-letter words have 2,278 and 1,145. Five-letter words have 68 at par 6, which is too few. The same rule decides the offered lengths if the word list changes. Your progress for each puzzle is saved in this browser so you can come back to it, and statistics for daily and random puzzles are kept separately, including the daily streak.
Start from the first word and type a new word that changes exactly one letter, in the same place, such as FELL to BELL. Repeat until you reach the target. FELL to BOOT takes four steps: FELL, BELL, BELT, BOLT, BOOT. Press Enter or Add after each word.
Par is the fewest steps that can turn the start word into the target, found by searching the word graph. For FELL to BOOT it is 4, because the words differ in four places. You can finish over par and still win, but the score drops by 10 for each extra step.
Either it changes more than one letter, or it is not in the game's list. The list holds 176 three-letter and 597 four-letter common words, so rare words, names, plurals and past tenses are often missing. The message under the ladder says which problem it is.
Hint adds the next word of a shortest route from the word you are on, and it is marked as a hint in your ladder. Each hint takes 15 points off the score. It works from any word, even after a wrong turn, and Undo takes a hint back.
At midnight on your own device. Everyone gets the same daily puzzle on the same date, with a word length of 3 or 4 letters chosen by the date. If you leave the tab open past midnight it moves on to the new day when you come back to it.
No. Puzzles are made in this tab, and your unfinished ladders and statistics are saved in this browser only. Google Analytics counts visits and finished puzzles, never your words.