How to play Word Chain

Change one letter, and land on a word

That is the entire rule. COLD, CORD, CARD, WARD, WARM. Lewis Carroll invented it in 1877 and called it Doublets, and nothing about it has needed changing since.

A word that is refused tells you which of the three things went wrong — not a word, more than one letter moved, or the wrong length — rather than simply refusing you and letting you guess.

The number beside the puzzle is a route, not a boast

Every puzzle is generated rather than written down: a start word is drawn, the whole dictionary of that length is searched outwards from it, and the target is taken at exactly the distance the round wants. So the number printed beside it is a route the game is holding.

You may use any word in the list, which is larger than the one that route was measured against. Finding a shorter chain than ours is allowed, is not rare, and the reveal says so when it happens.

Your chain is yours until the clock stops

A rival's chain would not be a hint, it would be a route: every rung on it has already been proved a legal step from a word you are standing near. So while the clock runs you see how many rungs everybody has and whether they are home, and nothing else.

Landing ends your climb, which is what makes going the long way round cost something. Then every route goes on the table at once with the changed letter marked in each link — a column of marks that is the whole story of somebody's round.

Questions people ask

Can one person play Word Chain on their own?

Yes. It is one of the games here that works with nobody else in the room, and it is also one of the three that feed the daily puzzle — so there is a fresh one every day whether or not anybody else turns up.

Do I need a big vocabulary?

No, and it is built so that you do not. Every rung of the route the game found is an ordinary word in the six commonest frequency bands, so the puzzle is always solvable with words everybody knows. Knowing rare ones helps you take a shortcut, not reach the top.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Word Chain?

No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.

Do we need accounts?

No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.

How many people can play Word Chain?

1 to 12 — best with three or four. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Word Chain take?

About 10 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.

Does it work over a video call?

That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.