About
What is a word ladder?
A word ladder is a puzzle that links two words of the same length through a chain of real words, where each word differs from the one before it by a single letter.
A puzzle born on Christmas Day
Word ladders were invented by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He dated the game's invention to Christmas Day 1877, and in 1879 he published a series of them in Vanity Fair under the nameDoublets. His best-known example turns HEAD into TAIL — the ladder shown above.
Over the years the same idea has picked up plenty of names — word golf, word chains, laddergrams, word links and, of course, the word ladder game. The rules have barely changed in almost 150 years.
The rules of a word ladder
- The start word and goal word have the same number of letters.
- Each step changes exactly one letter, keeping every other letter in place.
- Every step must be a genuine word.
- The best ladder is the shortest one.
Why word ladders are so satisfying
A word ladder rewards two kinds of thinking at once: vocabulary (knowing which words exist) and planning (seeing a few moves ahead). Short ladders are a quick warm-up; long ones feel like navigating a maze where every wall is made of letters. Teachers love them for spelling and phonics practice, and puzzlers love the moment a stubborn ladder suddenly clicks.
Word ladders and computers
Behind the scenes, every word of a given length is a point on a giant map, and two words are connected when they differ by one letter. Solving a ladder means finding the shortest path between two points. That's exactly how Word Ladder Club works out par for each puzzle, and how our hints always point you along a shortest route.
Play a word ladder now
The best way to understand a word ladder is to climb one. Play today's daily word ladder in our free word ladder game, warm up with word ladder unlimited, or read how to play word ladder and ourstrategy tips.