🪜 real BFS-verified puzzles, every step is a real word
Word Ladder
Turn the start word into the target word, one letter at a time — every step in between must be a real word too. Every puzzle is checked solvable before it's shown to you.
How it works
At load time the tool builds a full adjacency graph over roughly 2,400 four-letter words by comparing every pair for a one-letter difference, then generates each puzzle by picking a random start and target and running a breadth-first search to confirm a solution exists at your chosen step-length range before showing it to you.
FAQ
What happens if I take a longer path than the optimal solution?
You can still solve the puzzle — the win message reports how many extra steps you took beyond the BFS-computed optimal path, but it never blocks a longer, non-optimal solution.
Are hints always based on the original optimal path?
Only while you are still on that path — once you wander onto a different word, the hint button runs a fresh breadth-first search from your current word to the target, so the suggestion stays honest.
Free, unlimited, no account. If this saved you a paid tool, a small thanks is appreciated.