Word Ladder - Rules

Rules

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

COLD → CORD → CARD → WARD → WARM

COLD → CORD → CORM → WORM → WARM

COLD → WOLD → WORD → WARD → WARM

Often word ladder puzzles are created where the end word has some kind of relationship with the start word (synonymous, antonymous, semantic...). This was also the way the game was originally devised by Lewis Carroll when it first appeared in Vanity Fair.

Variations

Some variations also allow the following changes at each step:

• Adding a letter
• Removing a letter
• Use the same letters in different order (an anagram).