Rules

Gameplay

You are randomly given a pair of English words. Note: You can hover or click a word to reveal its Latin-script transcription.

Your task is to link them using these four possible mutations:

Word inclusion criteria

Valid answers are any word that is at least 3 letters long, is not a proper noun, and is not spelled using an apostrophe, hyphen, or a space. The words have been taken from the Read Lexicon.

The computer’s solution only uses words with at least a frequency rating of 50 on the Readlex. If you find and use a word rarer than that, you get a gold star!

Fun facts

• Lewis Carroll was the first person to publish a word ladder puzzle. He named it “Doublets”.
• Donald Knuth studied 5-letter (Latin-script) word ladders, because he found the 4-letter ones too easy. He also called words without any valid connections to other words “aloof”, that name being self-referential too!
• CodeParade has a great video about word chains.

Credits

• Gameplay most directly based on CraftWord by Luke White
• Based on Doublets, a word puzzle first published by Lewis Carroll, also known as “word ladders” or “word chains”
• Named in honor of Alice Liddell, the daughter for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Also named in honor of Wordle, the first viral daily word puzzle
• Word list from the Read Lexicon
• Programming by Haley Wakamatsu as free and open-source software
• Shavian font “Shaw Sans No. 1” by Philip Driscoll; altered and kerned by Haley Wakamatsu (paired with “Jost” by Owen Earl of indestructible type*)