About Word Ladder
Word Ladder is a free online word ladder game: start with one word, finish on another, and change just one letter at a time. Every step along the way must be a real word, so turning COLD into WARM becomes a little chain of discoveries: COLD, CORD, CARD, WARD, WARM.
It's the puzzle Lewis Carroll called Doublets, and it's still one of the best pencil-free brain teasers around. A good ladder feels obvious once you see it, yet finding it means juggling vowels, consonants and word families in your head.
Play a new daily word ladder every day (everyone gets the same puzzle, so you can compare results with friends), or switch to endless practice with 3-, 4- and 5-letter ladders. Each puzzle shows its par, the shortest possible number of steps, so there's always a reason to try for a cleaner climb.
How to play Word Ladder
- 1
Read the two ends of the ladder
The purple word at the top is where you start; the green word at the bottom is your goal. The number next to Par tells you how many steps the shortest ladder takes.
- 2
Change one letter
The row under your last word is your working row. Type the new word, or pick a letter with the arrow keys (or by tapping it) and type its replacement. The changed letter lights up orange, and only one letter can be different at a time.
- 3
Climb a rung
Press Enter. If the word is real and hasn't been used yet, it becomes a new rung. A small green bar under a letter means that letter already matches the goal word in that position.
- 4
Reach the goal
Keep going until you type the goal word itself. Your score is the number of steps you took, so fewer is better. Made a wrong turn? Undo removes your last rung at no cost.
- 5
Compare with the best ladder
When you finish, you'll see a shortest ladder for comparison, plus a colored dot beside each of your steps: green for a step that got you closer, yellow for a sideways move and red for a step that took you further away.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Type a word | Type the whole next word, then press Enter |
| ← / → | Choose which letter to change |
| Tap a tile | Select that letter on touch screens, then tap a key |
| Enter | Add the word as the next rung |
| Backspace | Put the changed letter back |
| Esc | Clear the row you're editing |
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Word Ladder tips and strategy
Count the letters that must change
Compare the start and goal letter by letter. If three letters differ, you need at least three steps. When par is higher than that count, the puzzle is telling you a detour is required, usually through a vowel.
Vowels are the hinges
Most ladders pivot on their vowels. Many can't be finished without a temporary vowel change; the classic CAT to DOG runs through COT and DOT. When you're stuck, try every vowel in the middle position before anything else.
Lock in matching letters early
Letters that already match the goal (shown with a green bar) are progress. Try not to change them again unless you have to. A ladder that fixes one position per step is usually a par ladder.
Work backward from the goal
Think about which words sit one step away from the goal word. For WARM, that includes WARD, WART, WORM, FARM and HARM. Then aim your ladder at one of those instead of the goal itself.
Try common endings
Word families like -ATE, -ANE, -OLD, -INE and -ICK connect huge numbers of words. Steering into one of these families gives you many options for the next move.
Use Undo freely
Only your final ladder counts, so experiment. Climb a couple of rungs to see where a path leads, and undo back if it goes nowhere. There's no penalty for exploring.
Save hints for real dead ends
A hint shows the next word on a shortest ladder from wherever you are, so it's most valuable after you've tried a few ideas. Hinted games still count as solved but don't set a personal best or reach the leaderboard.
Lewis Carroll's Doublets
The word ladder was popularized by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He introduced the puzzle as Doublets in the magazine Vanity Fair in 1879, challenging readers to "drive PIG into STY" or "turn HEAD into TAIL." In Carroll's terms, the two given words were the doublet, each new word was a link, and the finished ladder was a chain.
His famous HEAD-to-TAIL solution runs HEAD, HEAL, TEAL, TELL, TALL, TAIL. Readers competed to find the shortest chains, and the puzzle has been a staple of newspapers, classrooms and puzzle books ever since. Computer scientists love it too: word ladders are a classic example of finding the shortest path through a network, because every word is a point and every one-letter change is a connection.
How the daily word ladder works
The daily puzzle is a 4-letter ladder with a par of 5, and it's the same for every player on a given calendar date. It resets at midnight in your local time zone. You can play the daily puzzle once; after you finish, the page shows your ladder, a shortest ladder and a countdown to the next one.
Your daily result is the number of steps you used. Unassisted results go on the daily leaderboard, and the Share button creates a spoiler-free summary like this:
- 🟩 a step that brought you one step closer to the goal
- 🟨 a sideways step that didn't get closer
- 🟥 a step that moved you further away
- 💡 a step that came from a hint
Every daily pair is checked against the full dictionary, so par really is the shortest possible ladder. Beating par is impossible, but matching it is always achievable.
Practice ladders: 3, 4 and 5 letters
Practice mode gives you an endless supply of ladders at three word lengths, with par anywhere from 4 to 7 steps:
- 3 letters: short words with lots of connections. Great for warming up, though some ladders need surprising detours.
- 4 letters: the classic size, and the best balance of options and challenge.
- 5 letters: fewer neighbors per word, so you need to plan further ahead.
We track how many practice ladders you've solved, how many you finished at par and your current par streak. Your unfinished ladder is saved automatically, so you can close the page and come back to it. Looking for more word puzzles? Try Word Guess, Spelling Bee or Anagrams, or browse all our word games.
Frequently asked questions
What is a word ladder puzzle?
A word ladder asks you to turn one word into another by changing a single letter at a time, with every step forming a real word. For example, CAT becomes DOG through CAT, COT, DOT, DOG. The goal is to reach the target in as few steps as possible.
Who invented the word ladder game?
Lewis Carroll popularized it under the name Doublets, publishing the puzzles in Vanity Fair in 1879. He invented the game a couple of years earlier as a Christmas pastime. It's also known as word golf or a laddergram.
Can I rearrange letters or change the word length?
No. In a classic word ladder, the letters stay in their positions and the word length never changes. Each step swaps exactly one letter for another.
What does par mean in Word Ladder?
Par is the number of steps in the shortest possible ladder between the two words. Finishing at par means you found a perfect ladder. Every puzzle can be solved in exactly par steps.
Which words are allowed?
Any real English word of the right length is accepted as a rung, including less common ones. Proper nouns, abbreviations and words already on your ladder aren't allowed. The start and goal words are always everyday words.
Do hints or undo affect my score?
Undo is free, and only your final ladder counts. Hints reveal the next word on a shortest ladder; a hinted game still counts as solved, but it won't set a personal best or appear on the leaderboard.
Is there a new word ladder every day?
Yes. A new daily 4-letter word ladder appears every day at midnight your local time, and everyone plays the same puzzle. Practice mode has more than 2,000 extra ladders whenever you want to keep playing.