About Word Labyrinth
Word Labyrinth is a daily word ladder game for the web, iOS and Android. It is made by one person, in Croatia, under the company name CoreDL d.o.o. There is no team page because there is no team. This is me explaining why the game exists and how it is put together.
Why I made it
I like word ladders, and every version I could find had the same gap: you solve COLD to WARM in seven steps and the game says "well done". Was seven good? Is there a four? Nobody would tell me. So I built a word ladder game that knows the shortest path to every puzzle before you start and grades you against it. Finish in the minimum and you get full marks; every extra step costs you. That one feature is the reason the rest of this exists.
Everything else grew around it: five ranked puzzles a day that are the same for everyone, so a score means something; a practice mode for when you want to play without the clock; an expert mode for ladders of eight steps and up; weekly challenges with a twist in the rules; hints, streaks and the usual reasons to come back tomorrow.
Eleven languages
The game started in Croatian, because that is the language I think in, and English came with it. Then German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Indonesian. Pick any of them in the language menu and the puzzles, the dictionary and the interface all switch.
Each language is its own project, and the word list is where the time goes. A list of dictionary headwords is not enough: Croatian ladders need ima, bio and sve as rungs, and none of those is a headword. But let every form in and a puzzle turns into pas, pasa, pasu, one noun being declined, which is no puzzle at all. So for every language I decide which forms count, how many forms of the same word may follow each other, which forms may start or end a puzzle, and which words are too rare or too ugly to be the one bridge a solution hinges on. The aim is that when the shortest solution is revealed, your reaction is "of course", not "that is not a word". When a word gets through that should not have, or one is rejected that should be in, tell me and I will fix the list.
One rule that differs from Carroll
Lewis Carroll invented this puzzle in 1877 and called it Doublets. His rules allowed one change per step: swap a letter, nothing else. Two of his own are still good puzzles today:
HEAD → HEAL → TEAL → TELL → TALL → TAIL
COLD → CORD → WORD → WARD → WARM
Word Labyrinth keeps the swap and adds one more move: you may also add a single letter. It makes the start and target words free to differ in length, which opens up far more pairs, and in a language like Croatian or Turkish, where words grow by taking endings, it feels natural rather than like cheating. If you want Carroll's strict version, the Pure Swap weekly challenge is exactly that. The history, with dates and sources, is in the Doublets article.
How a day's puzzles are chosen
The five daily puzzles go from easy to hard on purpose: two short ones built only from common words, two in the middle, and a fifth that is allowed to be long and to use words you have to dig for. Every one of them is pre-solved before it is published, so an unsolvable pair or a puzzle that only works through some obscure archaism never reaches you. The whole world gets the same five, and once the day is over they move into the puzzle archive with their shortest solutions.
Money
The game is free. There is a banner ad under the board, which you can pay once to remove. Hint packs, streak freezes and streak recovery cost about a euro each. None of it buys a better score: a hint deducts from the puzzle it is used on, bought or not. I would rather the game pay for its servers this way than sell anything about you, and the privacy policy says that in the long form.
Mistakes
I write the blog and these pages myself. When I state a date or a fact about the puzzle's history I have checked it, and when I am not sure I say so rather than make up a tidy number. I still get things wrong. A misdated event, a word that should never have passed the filter, a ladder on this site that does not hold: email me and I will correct it.
The same goes for accessibility. The board works in light and dark themes and plays fully from the keyboard on the web, and the interactive parts are labelled for screen readers, but I know that is not the same as the whole game being comfortable with one. If something stops you from playing, that report goes to the top of the list.
Contact
The company details and email address are on the Impressum page, and inside the app under Settings → About → Contact. Bug reports, dictionary complaints, a word ladder you are proud of, a journalist who needs a screenshot: it all lands in the same inbox, and I read it.
Privacy, terms and your rights
- Privacy. The Privacy Policy lists what is collected and why. Your personal data is not sold.
- Terms. The Terms of Service cover the rules of using the game.
- Your data. Under the GDPR you can export or delete your data yourself, from the in-app Settings page, with no support ticket.
- Legal identity. CoreDL d.o.o. is registered in Croatia; the required disclosures are on the Impressum page.
Today's five are ready
The same daily word puzzle for everyone, graded against the shortest path.
Play Word Labyrinth