Wednesday, August 5, 2026 · #2
Word Ladder— Wednesday, August 5, 2026
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About Word Ladder
A word ladder is the puzzle Lewis Carroll invented on Christmas Day 1877 to entertain two bored children, and it has needed no improvement since. You are given two four-letter words. Change one letter at a time, keep every intermediate word a real word, and get from the first to the second. COLD to WARM is the classic: COLD, CORD, CARD, WARD, WARM.
The daily ladder here is always three or four rungs long, and the published solution uses common words only — nothing you would need a dictionary to defend. Every pair is checked before it ships: the shortest route through the common-word list must be the same length as the shortest route through the full legal word list, so the rung count on the board is the true minimum and there is no sneaky shortcut through an obscure word.
The board itself is more generous than the published answer. Any legal four-letter word is accepted as a rung, so if you get from PALE to LOST by a completely different route of the same length, the puzzle counts it — and you should feel rather good about it. There is usually more than one shortest ladder; the one on the answer page is simply the one the generator found first.
How to play Word Ladder
- 1Look at the two words: the top of the ladder is your start, the bottom is your goal.
- 2Fill the empty rungs between them, one word per rung.
- 3Each rung must differ from the rung above it by exactly one letter, in the same position count — no adding, removing or rearranging letters.
- 4Every rung must be a real four-letter word. Anagrams and swaps are not allowed; only single-letter substitutions.
- 5The number of rungs is fixed and is the true shortest route, so you cannot take a longer path even if it also works.
- 6Complete the ladder to solve the puzzle. Any valid shortest route counts, not just the one on the answer page.
Word Ladder strategy
- Compare the two words letter by letter first. The positions that already match usually stay put, and the ones that differ tell you exactly how many substitutions you need at minimum — if the words differ in three places, you need at least three steps.
- Work from both ends at once. Write the words one step away from the start and one step away from the goal, then look for a word that appears in — or is one letter from — both lists. Meeting in the middle roughly halves the search.
- Change vowels before consonants. Vowel swaps (CAT to COT, BAND to BOND) almost always produce a real word, so they are the cheapest way to move around the space and reach a useful consonant frame.
- Watch for a fixed frame. Many ladders keep two letters still throughout — everything is _A_E or S_O_ — and spotting the frame early turns the puzzle into filling two slots rather than four.
- If you are stuck one step from the goal, back up two rungs rather than one. Dead ends in word ladders are usually caused by a choice made earlier than the one you are staring at.
- Remember the plural trick: for many words, swapping the last letter to S is a legal step and lands you in a completely different neighbourhood of the graph.
Recent Word Ladder puzzles
Every past puzzle is still playable, and each has its own hints and answer page.
Word Ladder — common questions
What counts as a legal step?
Changing exactly one letter, in place, to make another real four-letter word. You cannot add or remove letters, and you cannot rearrange them — CARD to CRAB is two changes, and CARD to CARDS is not a step at all.
Is there only one correct ladder?
No. Several different ladders of the same length often exist, and the board accepts any of them as long as each step is legal and you use the stated number of rungs. The answer page shows one canonical solution; a different route of the same length is just as correct.
Which words does the game accept?
Any word on the full legal four-letter list, which is considerably larger than the everyday vocabulary. The published solution is deliberately restricted to common words, so the intended ladder never depends on knowing something obscure — but you are free to route through one if you spot it.
How long is the daily ladder?
Three or four rungs between the two given words, so four or five steps in total. Both lengths come up about equally often, and the count shown is the genuine shortest route — no shorter ladder exists, even using rare words.
I found a shorter route. Is the puzzle wrong?
It should not be possible: every pair is checked against both the common list and the full legal list, and is rejected if the two disagree on the shortest distance. If you have a shorter chain where each step changes exactly one letter, one of the steps is probably changing two letters or reordering them — that is the usual culprit.
Where does the word ladder puzzle come from?
Lewis Carroll invented it in 1877 under the name "doublets" and published a weekly column of them in Vanity Fair. His original rules are the ones still used today: change one letter at a time, and every link must be an English word.
More daily puzzles
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