In DKM Word Ladder, you need to transform the given start word to the end word in as few steps as possible. Each new word you enter must differ from the previous word in one of three ways:

1. One of the letters in the word is changed.
2. One letter is dropped to make a shorter word.
3. One letter is added to make a longer word.

For example, a solution for start word STRAY and end word ROADS could be:
STRAY -> TRAY -> TRAM -> RAM -> ROAM -> ROAD -> ROADS

Words can be of length 3, 4 or 5 letters only and must be valid English words. You have a maximum 16 steps to solve the puzzle. There are clues available if you get stuck and there are likely many solutions to each puzzle.

Currently there are three new puzzles per day: "Easy", "Medium" and "Hard".

Yesterday's Alternate Solutions

Notes

The computer generated solution only uses a limited word dictionary of the most common 25,000 English words (no proper nouns) so hopefully you should not need any obscure words. However, when you enter a word, a much larger dictionary of valid words is used so theoretically you may be able to find a solution in less steps.

You can use the keyboard (instead of the virtual one provided) for faster entry.

We welcome suggestions to any game improvements.