4-Letter Word Ladder — Free Online Puzzle

How to play

Connect the start to the target by changing exactly one letter at each step. Keep every letter in its position: adding, removing or rearranging letters is not allowed. Every entry must be a word in our accepted list, and you cannot reuse a word in the same ladder.

Type your next word into the input, or build it with the A–Z buttons, then press Enter. The changed letter is highlighted in each new row. If an entry has the wrong length, changes more than one letter, is missing from the dictionary or has already been used, a message explains what to fix.

Par is the fewest changes found by breadth-first search in the common-word list. You may use accepted inflections and finish with more steps, or occasionally fewer steps, than this common-word par. Reaching the target wins; your result compares your steps with par.

Undo removes your last entry. Hint shows the next word on a shortest route from your current position through unused accepted words; each request counts as a hint. Enter the suggested word yourself. If your route has no remaining unused-word connection, undo a step.

Show solution reveals a best route made entirely of common words. A revealed puzzle cannot earn a daily solve, even after reset or reload. Reset starts the same puzzle again. Hints are allowed for daily solves, and their count appears with your result.

The timer starts on your first entry or hint and stops when you finish or reveal. Share includes your time and step count without revealing any words. The daily puzzle uses four letters and changes at midnight UTC. Your streak counts consecutive UTC days solved; progress stays in this browser when storage is available.

Choose three, four or five letters for practice. These pages open a fixed seeded puzzle. New puzzle chooses another ladder in your browser; it does not change the published page. Three-letter ladders have par three to four, four-letter ladders four to five, and five-letter ladders four to six.

A short history

Lewis Carroll published this kind of word puzzle as “Doublets” in Vanity Fair in 1879. His rules kept letters in place and changed one letter at a time to connect two words of equal length. Read Carroll’s Doublets.

Solving tips

Compare the positions where your current word differs from the target. A useful change often fixes one of these positions, but the shortest route may temporarily move away from the target. The dictionary connection matters more than simply matching letters.

Try changing a vowel, then consider each consonant position. Short familiar words can act as bridges between very different spellings. Inflected forms are accepted, so a plural or a verb form may offer another connection.

If you become stuck, undo recent entries before asking for another hint. A used word cannot be repeated. You can take a longer route than par and still solve the puzzle, so explore connections without treating par as a move limit.

About the word lists

Our vocabulary comes from Alan Beale’s official 12dicts 6.0.2 release. Start words, targets and the revealed best route use 2of12. Player entries use 2of12inf, which adds inflected forms. We keep lowercase a–z entries of three, four and five letters, skip capitalized entries and abbreviation marks, and remove a reviewed list of offensive, sexual, vulgar and drug words from both pools. Some words are accepted when you type them, but the game never picks or suggests them. Code builds a graph linking words that differ in one position. Breadth-first search visits nearer words before farther ones, proving connectivity and the common-word par before a puzzle is published. The generator rejects disconnected pairs. Read about Alan Beale’s 12dicts.

The 2of12 list is public domain. The inflected 2of12inf list includes AGID (Copyright 2000 Kevin Atkinson), WordNet 1.6 (Copyright 1997 Princeton University) and UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary data (Copyright J Ross Beresford 1993–1999). Their permission and source notices are retained in our derived files and available below.