Word Ladder

Climb from one word to another by changing a single letter at a time. Every rung is a real word, and the game shows you the shortest ladder that exists.

Loads instantly in your browser — no download.

Paste this wherever you want the game to appear. It is free, needs no account, and the game carries no ads and no third-party trackers. Please keep the credit link underneath — that is the only thing we ask in return.

Size

Responsive 640 × 480 800 × 600

Responsive keeps the frame inside your column on a phone. Fixed sizes are easier to drop into an older layout.

HTML to paste

<div style="position:relative;width:100%;aspect-ratio:16/10">
  <iframe src="https://www.gamedavinci.com/embed/word-ladder/" title="Word Ladder"
    style="position:absolute;inset:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0"
    allow="fullscreen; autoplay; gamepad" loading="lazy"></iframe>
</div>
<p><a href="https://www.gamedavinci.com/game/word-ladder/">Word Ladder</a> by <a href="https://www.gamedavinci.com/">GameDavinci</a></p>

Or just the iframe URL

For game portals and directories that ask for a URL rather than markup.

Terms & all games →

About this game

Word Ladder is the puzzle Lewis Carroll invented for a bored houseful of children on Christmas Day 1877, and it has never needed a rewrite. You are given two words. Change one letter, get a new word. Change another. Keep going until you are standing on the second word. What makes this version different from a pencil-and-paper ladder is that it knows the answer. Every puzzle is generated by searching outward from the start word across the whole dictionary, one letter at a time, and the target is picked out of that search at a chosen depth. So the shortest ladder is not an estimate and it is not a stored answer — it is the number of steps the search took to find your target, and it is called par. Par changes everything about how the game feels. There is no losing. You cannot get stuck in a way you cannot back out of, and there is no clock. The only question is how close you can get to the shortest ladder that exists, which turns every puzzle into something you want to play twice. The board helps you see it happening. Alongside par and your step count there is a third number, Fewest: the best total you can still finish on from exactly where you are standing. Start a puzzle and it reads the same as par. Play a word that keeps you on a shortest ladder and it stays there. Play a word that wanders and it climbs, immediately, before you have made the mistake worse. Watching that number is the game. There are three- and four-letter ladders and three levels of each, from a three-rung warm-up to a ten-rung crossing of the dictionary. Every ladder has a link. Send it to someone and they get the identical puzzle — same start, same target, same par — so you can argue about who found the shorter route.

Controls

Type a word into the row under your ladder and press Enter to climb.

Keyboard

Any letter types into the highlighted slot and moves along one.
Enter plays the word in the row.
Backspace puts back the letter that was underneath.
Left and Right move the highlighted slot without changing anything.

Touch

Tap a letter on the on-screen keyboard to type, and Enter to play the word.
Tap any tile in your row to aim at that letter instead of retyping the whole word.
Undo steps back down a rung, Hint offers a word on a shortest ladder, and Retry puts you back at the start word with the same puzzle.

How to play

Change one letter at a time to climb from the start word to the goal word, in as few steps as you can.

The climb

Each step changes exactly one letter and leaves you on a real word.
Letters cannot move position and none can be added or removed.
You cannot use a word already on your ladder.

The numbers

Par is the length of the shortest ladder that exists between the two words. Nobody can beat it.
Steps counts the rungs you have played.
Fewest is the best total you can still finish on. If it is higher than par, a step went astray.