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Word Ladder Solver

Type a start word and an end word of the same length. Get the shortest ladder between them, with the changed letter in each step highlighted.

Type two words with the same number of letters. The solver changes one letter at a time, and every step is a real word.

The Word Ladder Solver finds the shortest chain of words that turns one word into another, changing one letter at a time. Type a start word and an end word, and it returns the ladder with the fewest steps, such as COLD to WARM in 4 steps: cold, cord, word, ward, warm. Every step is a real English word from a list of about 52,600 words. The tool is free, needs no sign-up, and runs in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. It works with words up to 12 letters, as long as both words have the same length. Use it to check a puzzle answer, find a route between two words, or see every shortest ladder that exists.

How to use the Word Ladder Solver

  1. Type your start word in the Start word box. Use letters A-Z only, up to 12 letters.
  2. Type your end word in the End word box. It must have the same number of letters as the start word. If it doesn’t, the tool tells you how many letters each word has.
  3. Optional: click Swap to exchange the two words.
  4. Click Solve Ladder, or press Enter.
  5. Read the result. Each word is labelled Start, Step 1, and so on through End, with the changed letter highlighted in each step. The step count appears along with the number of shortest ladders that exist.
  6. Check the Other shortest ladders list for up to 11 more routes.
  7. Words are not case sensitive, so cold, Cold and COLD all work. Tick Common words only to limit every step to words in the frequency list. If you tick it after a result, the tool re-solves instantly.

To try the tool without typing, click Try an Example. It cycles through COLD-WARM, CAT-DOG, HEAD-TAIL, APE-MAN, WHEAT-BREAD, LEAD-GOLD, BLACK-WHITE and ONE-TWO. If the best ladder uses a word tagged “rare”, the tool also shows the shortest ladder made only of common words, which may take more steps.

What is word ladder?

A word ladder is a puzzle in which you change one word into another by altering exactly one letter at a time. Every intermediate step must be a valid word. Lewis Carroll invented it in 1877 and called it Doublets.

For example, CAT can become DOG in three steps: cat, cot, dot, dog. Each step changes one letter in place, and the length of the word never changes.

Word ladder examples

These ladders were produced by the solver itself. HEAD to TAIL takes 5 steps: head, held, hell, tell, tall, tail. LOVE to HATE takes 3 steps: love, lave, have, hate, and 4 steps if you allow only common words: love, live, hive, have, hate. FISH to BIRD takes 6 steps: fish, wish, wise, wine, wind, bind, bird. LEAD to GOLD takes 3 steps: lead, load, goad, gold, or 4 with common words only: lead, head, held, hold, gold.

How does a word ladder work?

Two words are neighbours when they differ in exactly one letter at the same position. Solving a ladder means finding a path of neighbours from the start word to the end word. The rules are simple: keep the same length, change one letter per step, and never add, remove or rearrange letters.

The Word Ladder Solver uses breadth-first search. It starts at the start word and checks every word of the same length in its word list, expanding one layer of neighbours at a time. The first time it reaches the end word, that step count is the minimum, so no shorter ladder exists in the list. It then counts how many shortest ladders exist. When there are several, the one with the most common words is shown first.

The word list is large, so some ladders use unusual words. WHEAT to BREAD takes 13 steps with the full list, passing through unusual words such as “criss”. With Common words only it takes 14 steps, which is why the tool offers both.

When solving by hand, a few habits help. Letters shared by the start and end words can often stay in place. Changing a vowel often opens new neighbours. Working backwards from the end word and meeting in the middle can also make a long ladder easier to find.

Frequently asked questions

Is the word ladder solver free?

Yes. The tool is free and needs no sign-up. The word list downloads once, and everything runs in your browser.

Can the start and end word be different lengths?

No. Both words must have the same number of letters. If they don’t, the tool tells you how many letters each word has. Ladders that add or remove letters are not supported.

Why is there no ladder between my words?

Either one word has no one-letter neighbours, or the words can’t connect through the list. ZEBRA, for example, cannot start or end a ladder because it has no one-letter neighbours. The tool reports how many same-length words your start word can reach.

What is the shortest word ladder from cold to warm?

The shortest ladder is 4 steps: cold > cord > word > ward > warm. Three shortest ladders exist for this pair, and the tool shows the one with the most common words first.

Which word pairs need 5 steps?

APE to MAN takes 5 steps: ape > apt > opt > oat > mat > man, and it is the only shortest ladder. HEAD to TAIL also takes 5 steps, and it has 8 shortest ladders.

Is a doublets solver the same as a word ladder solver?

Yes. Lewis Carroll’s name for the puzzle was Doublets, so a doublets solver works on the same kind of ladder with the same rules.

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  • Cryptogram Solver: Work out a substitution cipher where each letter stands for another.
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  • Wordle Solver: Narrow down the possible answers to a Wordle puzzle.

About word ladders

Word ladder is a word game invented by Lewis Carroll. A word ladder puzzle begins with two words, and to solve the puzzle one must find a chain of other words to link the two, in which two adjacent words (that is, words in successive steps) differ by exactly one letter.

History

Lewis Carroll says that he invented the game on Christmas in 1877. Carroll devised the word game for Julia and Ethel Arnold. The first mention of the game in Carroll's diary was on 12March 1878, which he originally called "Word-links", and described as a two-player game. Carroll published a series of word ladder puzzles and solutions, which he then called "Doublets", in the magazine Vanity Fair, beginning with the 29March 1879 issue. Later that year, it was made into a book, published by Macmillan and Co.

J.E. Surrick and L.M. Conant published a book titled Laddergrams of such puzzles in 1927.

Vladimir Nabokov alluded to the game using the name "word golf" in the novel Pale Fire, in which the narrator says 'some of my records are: hate—love in three, lass—male in four, and live—dead in five (with "lend" in the middle).'

The game was revived in Australia in the 1990s by The Canberra Times as "Stepword".

Word ladders are often featured in the New York Times crossword puzzle.

Rules

The player is given a start word and an end word. In order to win the game, the player must progressively change the start word into the end word, creating an existing word at each step. Each step consists of a single letter substitution. For example, the following are the seven shortest solutions to the word ladder puzzle between words "cold" and "warm", using words from Collins Scrabble Words.

|COLD||→||CORD||→||CORM||→||WORM||→||WARM

|COLD||→||CORD||→||CARD||→||WARD||→||WARM

|COLD||→||CORD||→||WORD||→||WARD||→||WARM

|COLD||→||CORD||→||WORD||→||WORM||→||WARM

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article “Word ladder” (revision 1362571516, 2026-07-04), authors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Shortened: some sections and paragraphs were left out, and reference markers, images and templates were removed; wording is otherwise unchanged. This text remains available under the same licence.