Can you rearrange the letters in a word ladder?

No. A ladder changes one letter and leaves every other letter in the position it was already in. Rearranging the letters is a different puzzle — that is what [Word Scramble](/word-scramble) is for.

Do you have to find the shortest word ladder to win?

No. Any chain of real words that reaches the target counts, however long it runs. Par is shown so you know what a tight route looks like, and the board records your fewest changes so far for each length.

Which words count as a rung?

Anything in the shipped ENABLE dictionary — 172,823 entries, including plurals and verb forms. Proper nouns, abbreviations, hyphenated forms and anything with an apostrophe are not in it, so they are not accepted.

Is every word ladder on this site solvable?

Yes. The target is chosen by searching outwards from the start word and taking a word found at the right distance, so a complete route exists before the puzzle is shown to anyone. A pair with no route between them can never be dealt.

What does the hint do if I have gone the wrong way?

It recomputes. The hint searches from the rung you are actually standing on, not from the route the generator had in mind, and offers the next word on a shortest route from there — skipping any word already on your ladder, since the board would refuse it.

Word Ladder

A word ladder turns one word into another one letter at a time, and every rung in between must be a real word: COLD, CORD, CARD, WARD, WARM. Letters never move position and never change in pairs. Lewis Carroll invented the puzzle in 1877. Every ladder here is built backwards from a route that already exists, so one always does.

Par0Changes0Time0:00Streak0Ladder—

Hint writes the next word on a shortest route into the answer box — recomputed from the rung you are actually standing on, not from the route the puzzle had in mind, so it still helps after you have wandered; Undo takes the top rung back off, and Backspace on an empty box does the same. The three-dot menu holds today’s shared ladder, the word length, a reset to the start word, and a route revealed in full when you have had enough. Par is the shortest route through the common word list — a rarer word can beat it.

Your statistics · 4 letters

Played: 0
Won: 0
Win rate: 0%
Streak: 0
Best streak: 0
Best time: —
Fewest changes: —

This length

1,967 common four-letter words at 7.2 neighbours each — the classic size. Long enough that the route matters, short enough that changing the vowel is usually available.

Keyboard

A – Z: Type the next rung
Enter: Climb to it
Backspace: On an empty box, take the last rung back
Esc: Clear the box
Shift + F: Full screen
?: Show the shortcuts

Rungs: 3, 4 or 5 letters
Par: 4 to 6 changes
Accepted words: 172,823
First published: 1877

What is a word ladder?

A word ladder is a chain of words from a start word to a target word where each step changes exactly one letter and leaves the rest where they are. Every link in the chain has to be a word in its own right. The classic four-step example is COLD → CORD → CARD → WARD → WARM, and Lewis Carroll's own, published in Vanity Fair on 29 March 1877 under the name doublets, was HEAD → HEAL → TEAL → TELL → TALL → TAIL. Carroll's rules are still the rules: same length throughout, one letter at a time, no rearranging.

What makes it a puzzle rather than a word list is that the route is not obvious from the ends — and Carroll's own example proves it. HEAD and TAIL agree in no position, so four changes is the least that could possibly join them, and four is exactly what this board's par comes to on that pair. Carroll published five. The route everyone quotes is one change longer than it needs to be, and has been for nearly 150 years. Meanwhile pairs that look far closer than HEAD and TAIL cannot be joined at any length at all.

How do you solve a word ladder?

1Line the two words upWrite the target under the start and mark the positions that already agree. Those letters do not need touching, and every position that disagrees costs at least one change — that lower bound is often the whole answer to 'how long should this take'.
2Move the vowel firstVowels sit in the middle of the densest part of the graph. BAT reaches BET, BIT, BOT and BUT on its vowel alone, and a further twelve words on its first letter — CAT, EAT, FAT, HAT, MAT, PAT, RAT, SAT and VAT among them. Twenty-four ways out of one three-letter word. A five-letter word has 3.1 on average, so the vowel move is usually the one that keeps a route open at all.
3Work from both endsTake one step down from the start and one step up from the target, then see whether the two halves have met in the middle. Searching from both ends halves the depth you have to hold in your head, which is the same reason a computer does it.
4Back out earlyIf two changes in a row have not brought a shared letter into place, the branch is probably wrong. Undo is free here and a wasted rung is not: any route that revisits a word can be shortened by deleting the loop, which is why this board refuses a repeat.

Why do some words have no ladder at all?

Because the puzzle is a graph, and graphs have islands. Treat every word of a given length as a point and join two points whenever they differ in one letter; a ladder is then just a walk along those joins. Words in different components of that graph cannot be joined by any ladder of any length, and no amount of cleverness will change that.

Isolated words are commoner than people expect. Of the 3,050 common five-letter words this game draws from, 539 have no neighbour at all — more than one in six is a word no ladder can ever contain. Donald Knuth made the same point with the 5,757 five-letter words of The Stanford GraphBase in 1993; his standing example is ALOOF, which cannot be reached from anything. That is exactly why nothing here picks two words and hopes: the target is read out of a search that started at the start word, so the route is found before the puzzle is.

The one-letter-apart graph, measured on the word list this site ships
Length	Words	Average neighbours	With none	One shortest route
3 letters	677	12.8	4	27%
4 letters	1,967	7.2	80	35%
5 letters	3,050	3.1	539	59%

How is par worked out, and can you beat it?

Par is the length of the shortest route between the two ends, measured by breadth-first search across the common word list — so it is a fact about the puzzle, not an estimate. Ladders are dealt at par four, five or six. You can beat it, and it is not a bug: par is the shortest route through words a general audience knows, while a rung you type is judged against the full 172,823-word list. Climb through something rarer and you can genuinely come in under par.

Any route counts as a solve, not only a shortest one. How much slack that leaves depends on the length, measured over two thousand deals apiece: 59% of five-letter ladders have exactly one shortest route and nothing else will do, against 35% on four letters and 27% on three, where the typical ladder has four different best answers and one in ten has fifteen or more.

Which word length should you play?

Short is easy, which surprises people who assume longer words are the gentle option. A three-letter word has 12.8 neighbours on average — PAT alone has 28 — so almost every wrong turn has a way back and the puzzle forgives wandering. Five-letter words average 3.1 neighbours, whole regions hang off a single bridge word, and the two furthest-apart common five-letter words, CARVE and FLUTE, are thirty-five changes apart.

3 letters — the forgiving one. Dense, quick, good for a first ladder or a two-minute break.
4 letters — the classic size, and the one Carroll used. Enough room for the route to matter.
5 letters — the hard one. Dead ends are real, and the hint is worth taking.

How do you get better at word ladder?

Count the letters that already agreePositions where the start and target already match need no change at all, and every position that differs needs at least one. That count is a lower bound on par, and comparing it with the par shown tells you whether the route is direct or has to go round something.
Change the vowel before the consonantsThe vowel slot is where the graph is densest: BAT reaches BET, BIT, BOT and BUT without touching anything else. Swapping a consonant on a five-letter word often has only one or two options, and picking the wrong one costs two moves to undo.
Steer through the hub wordsA few words are joined to everything. CARE has 25 four-letter neighbours and PAT has 28 three-letter ones, so a route that passes through the _ARE or _AT family almost always has a next move waiting. A rung with one neighbour is the opposite: it commits you to a single continuation before you have seen where it goes.
Search from the target as well as the startAsk what could come immediately before the target — usually only a handful of words — and aim for those instead of the target itself. It converts a long forward search into two short ones, and on a five-letter ladder it is often the only practical way through.
On five letters, treat a dead end as information539 of the 3,050 common five-letter words have no neighbours at all, and many more have only one. If a promising rung offers nothing new, undo it immediately rather than hunting: the branch is genuinely finished, not merely difficult.

Word Ladder questions people ask

Can you rearrange the letters in a word ladder?: No. A ladder changes one letter and leaves every other letter in the position it was already in. Rearranging the letters is a different puzzle — that is what Word Scramble is for.
Do you have to find the shortest word ladder to win?: No. Any chain of real words that reaches the target counts, however long it runs. Par is shown so you know what a tight route looks like, and the board records your fewest changes so far for each length.
Which words count as a rung?: Anything in the shipped ENABLE dictionary — 172,823 entries, including plurals and verb forms. Proper nouns, abbreviations, hyphenated forms and anything with an apostrophe are not in it, so they are not accepted.
Is every word ladder on this site solvable?: Yes. The target is chosen by searching outwards from the start word and taking a word found at the right distance, so a complete route exists before the puzzle is shown to anyone. A pair with no route between them can never be dealt.
What does the hint do if I have gone the wrong way?: It recomputes. The hint searches from the rung you are actually standing on, not from the route the generator had in mind, and offers the next word on a shortest route from there — skipping any word already on your ladder, since the board would refuse it.

The rules in six lines

1Start at the word on the top rungEvery ladder opens with a start word and a target word of the same length, shown at the top and the bottom of the board.
2Change exactly one letterEach move replaces a single letter and leaves the others alone. Changing two at once is not a move, however good the resulting word is.
3Never move a letter's positionLetters stay in the slots they are in. You may not reorder them, add one or take one away — every rung is the same length as the last.
4Every rung must be a real wordEach step has to land on a word in the dictionary. The full ENABLE list is accepted, so a rare but genuine word is a legal rung and will be taken.
5No word twice on one ladderA rung already used is refused. Any route that revisits a word contains a shorter route that does not, so a repeat can never help you.
6Reach the target word to finishThe ladder ends the moment you land on the word at the bottom, whether that took par changes or twice as many.

The long version, with worked examples and the questions beginners actually ask, is on how to play word ladder.

Put Word Ladder on your own site

The board runs in an iframe with no tracking, no cookies and no sign-up. Paste this wherever you want it. See all the embeddable games for the rest.

<iframe src="https://www.cardgamenook.com/embed/word-ladder" width="100%" height="620" style="border:0;border-radius:10px;max-width:900px" title="Word Ladder — free online" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font:14px system-ui;margin:6px 0 0"><a href="https://www.cardgamenook.com/word-ladder">Play Word Ladder</a> at Card Game Nook</p>