Word Ladder
Get from the starting word to the target word, changing just one letter at a time.
Wortleiter
Gelangen Sie vom Ausgangswort zum Zielwort, indem Sie jeweils nur einen Buchstaben ändern.
All about chords
Learn all about chords in our comprehensive guide.
The guide is split onto 4 pages:
Welcome to Words and Music Games!
At Words and Music Games we create daily puzzles that are both entertaining and educational.
Test your vocabulary with Word-Ladder, a classic word game first invented by Lewis Carroll, where you transform one word into another by changing one letter at a time. For German speakers we offer Wortleiter, the same addictive challenge in German.
If you prefer music, try Chordle, a daily ear-training game where you listen to a chord and guess its notes in just six attempts.
Whether you love language or music, our games bring you a fresh challenge every day.
Word Ladder starts off with the starting word, the target word, and a blank line in between:
When you enter a new word, a new blank line is added:
The green background indicates a letter that matches the same letter in the target word. When you finish the challenge, all four letters will have a green background.
The challenge is to find a sequence of words from the starting word to the target word, changing just one letter at a time. And of course, all of the words must be real words in the English language.
You can't think of any words. Help is at hand!
After 40 seconds, a small "neighbours" symbol is displayed to the left of the word.
Touch it, or hold your mouse over it, and you get a diagram showing all the neighbouring words.
Of course, you can solve the puzzle without looking at this diagram.
The daily challenge
Every day there is a new word ladder to solve.
The word list
Every word that you enter in Word Ladder has to be a real word. Word Ladder uses a comprehensive list of 4-letter words in the English language.
The basic principle, is that the list should contain all 4-letter words in the English language. In most cases, it is clear whether something is a word or not. For example "book" is a word, but "kvas" is not.
However, there are a lot of cases where it is a matter of judgement, whether a word should be included in the list or not. This includes, for example, foreign words or archaic words.
You can read about our guidelines for which words are included, and which words are not included, on the page
But more than that, you can see the complete word list on our page
Missing words?
If you think a word is missing from the list, let me know!
History of word games
Word games start to develop after two critical preconditions have been met.
- Widespread literacy. Obviously, people who can't read and write do not play word games.
- Cheap printing and paper production, which enabled the production of newpapers and other periodicals.
Word Ladder is an early example of a word game which was published in a periodical.
Word Ladder was invented by Lewis Carroll (the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and published in the British magazine ‘Vanity Fair’ in 1879. He called the game "Doublets".
Learn more about the history of Word Ladder on the page:
Games published in periodicals are an important category. 34 years after Doublets, in 1913, the first crossword is published in the 'New York World'.
But for the most part, the history of word games mirrors the history of games. Puzzles in newspapers, board games, radio games, TV games, computer games. In each new category, somebody will probably invent a word game.
Read more about the history of word games on the page:
Even before the age of mass literacy, ancient scribes seem to have played with words. Two curiosities have survived from the ancient world:
- palindromes
- word squares and specifically, the SATOR square
Read more about these on the page:
The idea behind Chordle is that you listen to a chord and then try to guess what the chord is.
This is what the game looks like in the 3-Note piano version.
Using the "Play Chord" button ▶ you can listen to the chord. Then you can enter your first guess using the piano keyboard, and submit it using the enter key ⏎.
This is what it might look like after making two guesses.
After entering a chord, Chordle does a number of things:
- it sets the background colour of the notes to indicate
- green - right note, right position
- yellow - right note, wrong position
- grey - wrong note
- it determines what the chord is, and shows it to the right of the notes
- it shows a play button ▶ to the left of the notes
- it shows a pattern on the piano keys for the wrong note
- it shows a the chord on a piano keyboard below the notes
- it shows the chords in musical notation at the bottom of the screen
Using the play button ▶ next to the chord, you can listen to your guess, and compare it to the original chord.
Note:
You cannot listen to your chord until you have sumitted it using the enter key ⏎.That would be too easy!
In the guitar version, it looks a bit different:
- instead of a piano keyboard, you use a guitar fretboard to enter notes
- after entering a chord, it shows the notes on a fretboard on the right hand side
You can switch between these two versions using the guitar symbol or the piano symbol on the toolbar.
By the way, when you play the chord in the piano version, it sounds like a piano. When you play the chord in the guitar version, it sounds like a guitar.
Continuing the game, when I listened to the two guesses and the original chord, I could hear that:
- the first note was too high in the first guess
- the first note was too low in the second guess
In fact it sounded about one tone lower than the first note in the first guess (A) so it might be G.
We know that B♭ is in the chord, because it had a yellow background as the third note. If the first note is between E♭ and A, then it cannot be B♭, so B♭ must be the second note.
The chord sounded like a minor triad, so I decided to try D as the third note.
And that was correct!
Three different versions
The very first version of Chordle had 5 notes, making it very like the popular game Wordle. For most people, that is too hard, which is why we introduced versions with 4 notes and 3 notes.
The three versions are almost identical, but have one key difference.
- In the 4-note and 5 note versions, the first note is always the root note
- In the 3 note version, the root note may be at any position
The daily challenge
Every day there is a new chordle to solve.
Start the Daily Game:
The chords in Chordle
Chordle has a dictionary of chords and voicings which are allowed in the game.
This dictionary contains chords with 3, 4 and 5 notes, which are listed on the following pages:
Obviously you can use the 3, 4 and 5-note chords in the 3, 4 and 5-note games respectively.
You can also use:
- the 3-note chords in the 4-note and the 5-note game
- the 4-note chords in the 5-note game
This works by using one note twice, or even three times.
Look at the following example:
- The first chord has 5 different notes C-E-G-B♭-D.
- The second chord has only 4 different notes D♭-F-A♭-B-F.
F appears twice. - The third chord has only 3 different notes E♭-G♭-B♭-G♭-B♭.
Both G♭ and B♭ appear twice. - The fourth chord also has only 3 different notes B-E♭-G♭-G♭-G♭.
In this case G♭ appears three times.
There is an overview of the chords in the chordle on the chords page, but to really understand the chords, you need to read our guide to All about chords.
All about chords
This site contains a comprehensive guide to chords, which will help you to understand chords and to play chordle.
The guide does not assume any particular knowledge about music or about chords. The ideas are introduced in a logical order which anyone interested in chords should be able to understand.
The pages in the guide illustrate chords on a piano keyboard and on a guitar fretboard. They do not use any musical notation.
The guide is split onto 4 pages, which cover four different kinds of chord.
This page introduces the most basic ideas and describes the 4 kinds of triad, which are chords with 3 notes.
This page introduces more ideas and describes the different 7th chords.
This page briefly introduces extended chords and then goes on to describe added note chords. Added note chords contain additional notes, but NOT the 7th.
This final page describes the complex extended and altered chords used in jazz.
Wortleiter is the German language version of Word Ladder.
Wortleiter beginnt mit dem Ausgangswort, dem Zielwort und einer Leerzeile dazwischen:
Wenn Sie ein neues Wort eingeben, wird eine neue Leerzeile hinzugefügt:
Der grüne Hintergrund zeigt einen Buchstaben an, der mit dem gleichen Buchstaben im Zielwort übereinstimmt. Wenn Sie das Rätsel gelöst haben, sind alle vier Buchstaben grün hinterlegt.
Die Herausforderung besteht darin, eine Wortfolge vom Ausgangswort zum Zielwort zu finden, wobei jeweils nur ein Buchstabe geändert werden darf. Und natürlich müssen alle Wörter echte Wörter der deutschen Sprache sein.
Ihnen fallen keine Wörter ein? Kein Problem!
Nach 40 Sekunden wird links neben dem Wort ein kleines „Nachbarsymbol“ angezeigt.
Wenn Sie darauf tippen oder mit der Maus darüberfahren, wird ein Diagramm mit allen benachbarten Wörtern angezeigt.
Natürlich können Sie das Rätsel auch lösen, ohne sich dieses Diagramm anzusehen.
Das tägliche Rätsel
Jeden Tag gibt es eine neue Wortleiter zu lösen.
Die Wortliste
Jedes Wort, das Sie in Wortleiter eingeben, muss ein echtes Wort sein. Wortleiter verwendet eine umfassende Liste von 4-Buchstaben-Wörtern der deutschen Sprache.
Das Grundprinzip dabei ist, dass die Liste alle 4-Buchstaben-Wörter der Sprache enthalten soll. In den meisten Fällen ist klar, ob etwas ein Wort ist oder nicht. Zum Beispiel ist „Buch” ein Wort, „gobd” hingegen nicht.
Es gibt jedoch viele Fälle, in denen es eine Ermessensfrage ist, ob ein Wort in die Liste aufgenommen werden soll oder nicht. Dazu gehören beispielsweise Fremdwörter oder archaische Wörter.
Auf der folgenden Seite können Sie unsere Richtlinien dazu lesen, welche Wörter in die Liste aufgenommen werden und welche nicht.
Darüber hinaus können Sie die vollständige Wortliste auf der folgenden Seite einsehen.
Fehlende Wörter?
Wenn Sie glauben, dass ein Wort in der Liste fehlt, lassen Sie es mich wissen!