how to play doublet
Doublet (also known as a word ladder) is a word game. You get two words, and you must transform the start word into the target word one step at a time.
Each step can change a letter, add one, take one away, or rearrange the letters you have. Every step has to be a real word.
There is no single right answer. Any valid path from the start to the end is a solution. Leaderboards count the number of steps you used, so shorter ladders are better.
the rules
Swap one letter for another and leave the rest alone. Head becomes bead.
Add a letter anywhere, keeping the others in order. Hose becomes house.
Take a letter out and close the gap. Chat becomes cat.
Rearrange all the letters into a different word. Silent becomes listen.
Every step must be at least 3 letters long.
A word can appear in the ladder only once.
a worked example
Let's walk through a whole puzzle, from rain to snow, one word at a time.
- rain???step 1snow
We need to connect "rain" to "snow".
- rainremove "i"ran???step 2snow
Take the "i" out of "rain" and you get "ran".
- rainremove "i"ran???step 3nowadd "s"snow
You can build up from the bottom, too. Here we enter "now", which gets added before "snow".
- rainremove "i"ran???step 4wonscramblenowadd "s"snow
We can scramble "won" to get "now". The two open ends are "ran" and "won", one word apart.
- rainremove "i"ranchange "r" to "w"wanchange "a" to "o"wonscramblenowadd "s"snow
We finish with "wan": one step from "ran", one step from "won". Four words added, so this scores as 4 steps. All done!
controls
Type a word into the box and press enter. A valid word joins whichever end it is one move from.
The × beside a word removes it and the steps after it. Backspace in an empty box takes you back to your last word.
tips
- Get shorter. Three and four letter words have far more neighbors than long ones, so dropping a letter opens up more routes. You can add it back later, somewhere else.
- Work both ends at once. You can search outward from each end and meet in the middle.