🪜 Rungs

The hook

Word ladders are a hundred years old; what they never had is a scoreboard. Rungs deals one ladder a day — same start word, same end word, for everyone — and scores it like golf. The app's solver knows the shortest possible path; that's par. Solve it in fewer moves than your sister and you own the group chat until tomorrow. It's Wordle's social contract bolted onto a puzzle with genuinely more room for cleverness: there are many roads from FLAME to BRICK, and yours says something about you.

A sample round

How a round plays

• The daily puzzle shows a start word, an end word, and the par (the solver's shortest path).
• Change exactly one letter per rung; every rung must be a real word from the game's word list.
• Reach the end word in as few rungs as you can — under par is a birdie, way over is a bogey.
• Stuck? Take a hint for a one-stroke penalty, or undo back up the ladder freely.
• Share your result as an emoji trail that shows your score but never spoils the path.

Why it's sticky

Same three loops that made Wordle a habit — one-a-day scarcity, a streak counter, and a brag-friendly share card — plus one Wordle doesn't have: relative skill. Everyone finishes most days, but finishing in 3 when the family found 4 is a genuine flex, and the post-solve "par path" reveal teaches you to see the trick you missed. That's the hard-to-master curve: kids clear par with common words; adults chase birdies through obscure ones.

Modes

• Daily — one shared ladder, streaks and stats in localStorage, emoji share card.
• Practice — unlimited random ladders by difficulty (3-, 4-, 5-letter words).
• Party race — same ladder, pass the phone, fewest rungs wins; ties broken by time.