BIRD2WORD BETA

Swift Words, Sharp Minds.

What is BIRD2WORD?

BIRD2WORD is a word ladder game. You're given a start word and a target word, both four letters long. Your job is to turn one into the other by changing exactly one letter at a time — and every step along the way has to be a real word.

A quick example

To go from BIRD to WORD, one path looks like this:

Each word differs from the one before it by a single letter. That's the whole game — simple to learn, but the shortest path isn't always obvious.

How to play

• Type your guess. On desktop, just type on your keyboard. On a phone, tap the puzzle board and your keyboard will pop up.
• Press Enter to submit a word. If it's a real word and only one letter away from your last word, it gets added to your chain.
• Tile colors give you feedback: blue means that letter matches the target word, yellow means that's the letter you just changed.
• Backing up is easy — just retype a word you already used (or the start word) and your chain rewinds to that point, no penalty.

Modes

• Random by Difficulty — Easy, Medium, or Hard puzzles, pulled at random from a dictionary of nearly 5,000 four-letter words.
• Fun Word Pairs — a curated set of especially fun or clever start/target pairs.

Flip It

Stuck, or just want a change of pace? Hit Flip It at any time to swap your start and target words. Nothing you've already solved is lost — the words you've used simply reappear on the board from the other end, already filled in. You just need to build a path until you connect to them. Flip as many times as you like.

Mercy

If you want to give up on a puzzle, hit Mercy! and confirm. The rest of the path will be filled in for you so you can see how it plays out. Give-ups don't count toward your stats or score — they're just there so you're never stuck.

Scoring

Your score rewards solving a puzzle in as few words as possible, and rewards speed too — though word-efficiency matters more than time. Harder puzzles (ones with a longer shortest path) score higher. After you solve a puzzle, you can also tap "Shortest possible" in the results to reveal one example of the most efficient path.

Stats

Your average and best time, word count, and score are tracked separately for each mode and difficulty, right in your browser. They stay on your device and aren't shared anywhere.

Playground

Want to build your own puzzle? Head to the Playground — type in any start and target word (4 or 5 letters) and it'll find the shortest ladder between them, if one exists.

Merch

Curious what BIRD2WORD word pairs might look like on a sticker or shirt? Check out the Merch preview — a first look at a few designs. Nothing's for sale yet.