Word Labyrinth vs Wordle vs Weaver
We make Word Labyrinth, so read this knowing that. But I play all three most mornings, in that order, and they are not competing for the same ten minutes. Wordle is a deduction puzzle. Weaver is a word ladder stripped to the bone. Word Labyrinth is a word ladder game with a daily ladder of five, a rating, and a lot more to do.
The short version
- Wordle: guess a hidden 5-letter word in six tries, using green, yellow and grey feedback.
- Weaver: one 4-letter word ladder a day. Start and target are shown; change one letter at a time until you arrive.
- Word Labyrinth: 5 ranked word ladders a day, 3 to 7 letters long, easy to hard, plus unlimited Expert mode, a global leaderboard, streaks and hints. English and ten other languages.
If what you like is working out a hidden word, Wordle is the one. If what you like is turning one word into another, Weaver and Word Labyrinth are siblings: Weaver is the tighter single puzzle, Word Labyrinth is the longer session.
Side by side
| Aspect | Wordle | Weaver | Word Labyrinth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mechanic | Deduction (guess a hidden word) | Word ladder (change one letter) | Word ladder (change one letter) |
| Word length | 5 letters | 4 letters | 3 to 7 letters, mostly 4 and 5 |
| Puzzles per day | 1 | 1 | 5 ranked, plus unlimited Expert |
| Time per day | 2–5 minutes | 2–6 minutes | 6–15 minutes for all five |
| Goal | Find the word within 6 guesses | Reach the target by any chain | Reach the target in the fewest steps |
| Rewards | Inference, common 5-letter words | Vocabulary breadth | Vocabulary breadth and planning |
| Hints | No | No | Yes, limited; earned by playing, and using one lowers that puzzle's score |
| Leaderboard | No, personal stats only | No, personal stats only | Global, with a rating and tiers |
| Streaks | Personal | Personal | Personal, with hint rewards at 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 100 and 365 days |
| Languages | English | English | English plus ten others |
| Platforms | Web and the NYT Games app | Web | Web, iOS, Android |
| Cost | Free | Free | Free, optional purchases |
| Launched | 2021 (Josh Wardle); NYT from 2022 | 2022 | 2024 |
Wordle
Wordle is the easiest of the three to explain to someone who has never played: six guesses, five letters, one hidden answer, and after each guess the tiles tell you which letters are right, which are in the word but misplaced, and which aren't there. Good players open with a high-information word (CRANE, SLATE, ADIEU, whichever camp you belong to) and narrow fast.
What Wordle does better than either ladder game is the shared moment. Everyone on earth has the same single puzzle, so the grid of coloured squares you paste into a group chat means something to the people reading it. It's also the shortest of the three, which is a feature, not a flaw. The main complaint, that repeated-letter answers like LLAMA or CACAO feel unfair, is really a complaint about having only six guesses, and six guesses is the whole point.
Weaver
Weaver is the word ladder with everything else removed. One puzzle a day, four-letter words, start and target visible from the first second, no hints and no score beyond your step count. It appeared in 2022 in the wave of dailies that followed Wordle and is still running.
I admire it. It loads instantly, asks nothing of you, and is finished in a few minutes. Because every word is four letters, the whole game lives in one dense neighbourhood of English, and the skill is knowing the odd corners of that neighbourhood: which vowel swap opens a path, which little word (CORD, TEAL, GIRT) bridges two common ones. If you only want one ladder a day and you never want to think about streaks, ratings or a store, Weaver is the better choice and I'd say so to your face.
Word Labyrinth
Word Labyrinth is the same puzzle family as Weaver with the structure of a modern daily around it. Each day you get a ladder of 5 puzzles that climbs from easy to hard: the first two are short, friendly chains of two or three steps, the middle two stretch to five, and the fifth can run to twelve steps and bring in words you wouldn't put in a children's book. Lengths vary from day to day, mostly 4- and 5-letter words with 3s and the occasional 6 or 7 mixed in.
Then there's everything around the ladder: a global leaderboard with a rating that moves after each day, tiers from Bronze III to Grandmaster, streak milestones that pay out hints, an Expert mode that hands you puzzles for as long as you want them, and the same game in Croatian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish. The honest downside is that this is more to take in, and a session is 6 to 15 minutes rather than 3. Some people want that. Some don't.
Difficulty
Wordle's difficulty is fixed by its format: the same six guesses, the same five letters every day. Days vary in nastiness, but the structure never does.
Weaver's difficulty is whatever the day's pair happens to be. Some 4-letter pairs are three steps apart, some are seven, and there's no ramp.
Word Labyrinth ramps by design. Puzzle 1 is meant to be solved by anyone, puzzle 5 is meant to be lost sometimes. The thing that changes the feel most is the goal: Weaver asks you to get there, Word Labyrinth asks you to get there in the fewest steps, because we know the shortest path for every puzzle and score you against it. That turns the last puzzle from a vocabulary test into a planning problem.
Vocabulary
Wordle rewards common 5-letter words and a few "Wordle words" that only exist as openers. Its answer list is curated, so you will never be asked to know a rarity.
Both ladder games reward breadth instead, and specifically the small, slightly old words that act as bridges: CORD between COLD and WORD, TEAL between HEAL and TELL. Strong ladder players carry a private list of these. Word Labyrinth's harder puzzles go further into the dictionary than Weaver's four-letter world ever needs to.
After the daily
Wordle and Weaver are strictly one a day. Done means done, and some players like exactly that. Word Labyrinth's Expert mode keeps going, with its own leaderboards for total score, speed and hardest puzzle solved, which is the difference between a five-minute habit and a thirty-minute one.
Sharing
Wordle's share is the emoji grid, and it's still the best share any daily game has invented. Weaver's is your step count. Word Labyrinth gives you a result card and a link that lets a friend play the exact puzzle you just played, so you can argue about whose path was shorter.
Which one
All three, on different days, is the real answer. Wordle for the three-minute coffee puzzle and the group chat. Weaver when you want one clean ladder and nothing else. Word Labyrinth when you want the ladder as a daily session, closer to a crossword habit than to Wordle.
If you've noticed you enjoy Weaver's change-one-letter feel more than Wordle's deduction, Word Labyrinth is five of those a day with the same core rule, a target to beat, and ten more languages to try it in.
Where they come from
Weaver and Word Labyrinth share an ancestor: Lewis Carroll's Doublets, invented in 1877 and published in Vanity Fair from 1879. His rule, change one letter at a time and every word must be real, has passed through newspaper puzzle pages and computer-science textbooks to reach the web unchanged. Wordle is a cousin from the deduction side of the family. The full story is in our history of Carroll's Doublets.