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Word Ladder Solver
Change one letter at a time, making a real word at every step. This finds the shortest possible ladder between your two words.
Enter a start word and an end word of the same length.
What a word ladder is
Invented by Lewis Carroll in 1877 under the name Doublets, a word ladder turns one word into another by changing a single letter at a time. Every rung has to be a real word, and both words must be the same length.
Carroll's own famous example turns COLD into WARM:
| Step | Word | Changed |
|---|---|---|
| Start | COLD | — |
| 1 | CORD | L → R |
| 2 | CARD | O → A |
| 3 | WARD | C → W |
| 4 | WARM | D → M |
The changed letter is highlighted at each rung in your results.
Why some pairs have no ladder
Not every pair connects. A word whose neighbours are all dead ends is effectively isolated, and no chain can reach it. Shorter words connect far more easily than longer ones — three and four letter ladders almost always exist, while eight-letter ones frequently do not.
The solver searches breadth-first, which means the ladder it returns is guaranteed to be the shortest one that exists. There may be other ladders of the same length.
About our word list. Results come from ENABLE, a large open English lexicon in the public domain, with offensive terms filtered out. It is not an official tournament dictionary, so a word that appears here may still be challenged in competitive play, and vice versa.
Common questions
Do both words have to be the same length?
Yes. Each step changes one letter, so the length never changes. The tool tells you if the two words do not match.
Is the answer the shortest ladder possible?
Yes. The search is breadth-first, which always finds a shortest path. Other ladders of the same length may also exist.
Why does it say my word is not in the list?
Both words must be in our dictionary. Proper nouns, abbreviations and hyphenated words are not included.
Who invented word ladders?
Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in 1877. He called the puzzle Doublets.