Word Labyrinth

The Word Ladder & Word-Game Glossary

By the Word Labyrinth team at CoreDL d.o.o. · Updated 17 June 2026

Every puzzle hobby grows its own vocabulary, and word ladders are no exception. This is our plain-English reference for the terms we use across Word Labyrinth — what each one means, why it matters when you play, and a worked example wherever an example makes it clearer. Each entry has its own anchor, so other pages and articles can link straight to the definition they need.

The list runs roughly A to Z. If you are brand new to the game, start with word ladder and step, then read the full rules over on How to Play.

Anagram

A word formed by rearranging all the letters of another, using each letter exactly once: LISTEN and SILENT, or NIGHT and THING. Anagrams are a cousin of the word ladder rather than part of it — a ladder never reshuffles letters, it only swaps one at a time. We include the term because most people who enjoy ladders also enjoy anagrams, and the two often appear side by side in puzzle collections.

Bridge word

The pivotal word that connects two otherwise distant halves of a ladder — the rung everything hinges on. Remove it, or fail to spot it, and the chain has no way across. Consider this short ladder:

SHIP → SHOP → STOP

Here SHOP is the bridge word. SHIP cannot reach STOP in a single change, but SHOP shares enough with each that it links them. Finding the right bridge word is often the whole puzzle: the start and target are easy to read, but the rung in the middle is the one you have to discover. Our strategy tips are largely about training your eye to spot these connectors quickly.

Daily puzzle

The same set of puzzles served to everyone on a given calendar day, so players can compare results fairly. Word Labyrinth's daily run is a ranked set of games rather than a single ladder. See modes below, and How to Play for how scoring and streaks work.

Doublet

The original name for a word ladder. Lewis Carroll invented the puzzle in 1877 and called it a "Doublet", presenting a start word and a target and inviting the reader to link them by changing one letter at a time. A Doublet of his you may have seen turns COLD into WARM:

COLD → CORD → WORD → WARD → WARM

"Word ladder", "word chain" and "step ladder" are all later names for the same idea. For the full story, see our piece on Carroll and the Doublets.

Island word

A word that has no neighbours at all — nothing else of the same length sits one letter away from it. An island word can never appear in a ladder, because there is no way to reach it or leave it. Many uncommon words and unusual spellings are islands. This is one reason a start–target pair can be unsolvable: if either end is an island, no chain can connect them. We never set an island word as a puzzle goal.

Isogram

A word in which no letter repeats — LUMBERJACKS and UNCOPYRIGHTABLE are oft-cited long examples; shorter ones like HORSE or PLANT are far more common. Isograms are a crossover term from the wider word-game world. They have no special role in a ladder, but they tend to be flexible starting points because their distinct letters give you more directions to change into.

Minimal pair

Two words that differ in exactly one position — BAT and BAD, or SHIP and SHOP. The term comes from linguistics, where minimal pairs are used to show that a single sound distinguishes two words. In ladder terms a minimal pair is simply a valid single step: every rung-to-rung move in a ladder is a minimal pair. The two ideas describe the same relationship from different angles.

Minimum steps

The fewest single-letter changes needed to get from the start word to the target. It is the length of the optimal path, counted in steps. We precompute the minimum for every puzzle in advance, so the game can tell you the shortest possible solution and measure yours against it. Beating or matching the minimum is the benchmark good solvers aim for — see our strategy tips for how to get closer to it.

Neighbour

Any word that sits exactly one letter away from a given word — same length, one position different. CAT has neighbours such as COT, BAT, CAR and CAP, among others. The number of neighbours a word has is a strong clue to how easy it is to work with. A word with many neighbours gives you plenty of ways forward; a word with very few can become a dead end mid-ladder. Common short words tend to be richly connected, which is why so many memorable ladders are built from three- and four-letter words.

Optimal path (shortest path)

The shortest valid chain from start to target — the route that uses the fewest steps. "Optimal" here means optimal in length, not the prettiest or the one you happened to find. A puzzle can have several different optimal paths of the same length, and many longer valid paths besides; all of them are correct solutions, but only the shortest are optimal. We work out an optimal path for each puzzle ahead of time so the game always knows the best achievable score, and so a fair hint can point you one step nearer the target. We don't reveal that path while you play — discovering it is the fun.

Practice (mode)

A relaxed, unranked way to play as many ladders as you like without affecting your daily streak or standing. Practice is the place to experiment with the ideas in this glossary. See modes and How to Play.

Ranked (mode)

The competitive daily run, where your steps, time and hints are scored and contribute to your streak. Everyone gets the same ranked puzzles each day. See modes.

Step (rung)

A single move that changes exactly one letter and produces a real word. Steps are the most common source of confusion for newcomers, because steps count the moves between words, not the words themselves. The COLD-to-WARM ladder above lists five words but takes four steps — one for each arrow. Put simply, the number of steps is always one less than the number of rungs. When the game reports your solution length, or compares it to the minimum, it is counting steps, so a five-word chain scores as four. A single step is sometimes called a "rung".

Target word

The word you are trying to reach. A puzzle is defined by its start word and its target; everything in between is yours to find. A start–target pair only makes a puzzle if a valid chain exists between them — when none does, the pair is unsolvable.

Unsolvable pair

A start word and target word that cannot be connected by any chain of single-letter steps, no matter how long. This happens when one end is an island word, or when the two words live in separate, unconnected clusters of the language with no rung in common. An honest example: you cannot ladder between two words of different lengths at all, because every step must preserve length — CAT can never reach CART, since adding a letter is not a legal move. We screen every puzzle so the pairs we set are always solvable; the term matters mainly when people try to invent their own ladders and hit a wall.

Word graph

A way of picturing the language as a web of connected words. Imagine every word of a given length as a dot, with a line drawn between any two words that are neighbours. Solving a ladder is then like tracing a route through that web from one dot to another. This is a mental model, not a method — it helps explain why some pairs connect in two steps and others need a dozen, and why a well-connected word makes a better stepping stone. You never need to draw the web to play; it is simply a useful picture of why ladders behave as they do.

Word ladder

The puzzle itself: change a start word into a target word one letter at a time, where every word along the way must be a real word of the same length. Each change is a step; the chain of words is the ladder. A tiny example:

CAT → COT → DOT → DOG

Three steps turn CAT into DOG. That is the whole game in miniature — and once you add a target worth reaching, the bridge words, neighbours and optimal paths defined above are all you need to talk about it precisely. For a fuller definition and history, see What is a word ladder?, and for two dozen solved chains, our worked examples.

Modes: daily, ranked, expert and practice

Word Labyrinth groups its puzzles into a few modes, and the names recur throughout the site:

The full rules for each mode, including how hints, time and streaks are scored, live on How to Play. If you simply want to start, the quickest route is to open a puzzle and change your first letter.

Put the vocabulary to work

Now that bridge words and optimal paths have names, the puzzles read differently. Try a few.

Play Word Labyrinth

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