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A free daily word ladder puzzle: change one letter at a time to turn the start word into the target. Every step has to be a real word.
Every puzzle gives you a start word and a target word. The target is sometimes a letter longer.
Change one letter, or add one, to make a new word that is in the dictionary.
Fewer steps score higher. Stuck? A hint gives you a clue to the next word, and can reveal it if you want.
Turn COLD into WARM in 4 steps
A word ladder turns one word into another one letter at a time, and every rung has to be a real word. Lewis Carroll made the first one on Christmas Day 1877 for two bored girls, called it “Doublets,” and from March 1879 ran it as a column in Vanity Fair. The rules have not changed since. There is no trivia in it and nothing to look up; the whole puzzle is the shape of the words and the paths between them.
The good ones look impossible and turn out to be short. CAT to DOG is three steps (CAT → COT → COG → DOG); COLD to WARM is four, as above. Every Word Labyrinth puzzle is pre-solved, so we know the shortest path before you start, and your solution is graded against it. Read the full word-ladder guide →
Finding the chain is a small, real workout. You hold three or four candidate words in your head, spot which letter to change next, and dig up words you have not used in years. Because every puzzle has a known best answer, the feedback is honest: you matched it or you did not. Five puzzles take a few minutes, which is about the right size for a daily habit. Teachers use word ladders for spelling and phonics; crossword and Scrabble players use them to warm up. More on the vocabulary benefits →
Yes. The daily puzzles, leaderboards and every game mode are free on the web, iOS and Android. Hints and streak freezes can be bought, but you earn them by playing too, and nothing is locked behind them.
A daily ladder is five puzzles: two easy ones of 2 or 3 steps, two medium ones of 3 to 5, and one hard one of up to 7. The easy ones take most people under a minute; the hard one is where the time goes. Expert mode puzzles start at 8 steps.
Wordle hides the word and you guess it. Word Labyrinth shows you both words and asks for the shortest chain between them. Nothing is hidden, so it is about finding a path, not guessing.
No. Some words have no one-letter neighbours at all, and others sit in a small pocket of the dictionary with no way out. Word Labyrinth only serves puzzles it has already solved, so a path always exists. Why some ladders are impossible →
A hint first gives you a clue: the meaning of the next word on a shortest path. It costs a tenth of that puzzle’s score. If you want the word itself, a second hint reveals it for another quarter. It also tells you if you first have to back up. You earn hints by playing: one for every second puzzle you finish, one for a full daily ladder, more at streak milestones. You can also buy packs.
Yes: Croatian, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Indonesian are live, each with its own dictionary and its own daily ladder. Pick one in the language menu. Inflected forms count as words (CASAS, HABLAMOS, CHEVAUX, AIMES, MAKANAN), and each alphabet keeps its own letters: in Croatian LJ, NJ and DŽ are single letters, in German Ä, Ö, Ü and ß are letters of their own, and so are Ñ, Œ and the accented vowels of Spanish, Italian and French, though you can type them without the accent and the game fills it in.