The rules
- Change exactly one letter per step. The other three letters stay exactly where they are — no shuffling.
- Every step must be a real word. Poople accepts 3,898 four-letter English words. Names and abbreviations don't count.
- No repeats. You can't play a word that's already on your ladder.
- Finish at POOP. The fewer steps, the better your score.
A worked example
Say the start word is SLAP. Compare it with POOP letter by letter: only the final P matches, so you need at least three changes.
Change the A to an O (SLOP), then the S to a P (PLOP), then the L to an O — POOP in three steps. The brown tiles show letters that already match POOP, so you can watch the ladder "brown" as you close in. The honey underline marks the letter you changed on each step.
Scoring: par and friends
Every puzzle has a par: the shortest ladder from the start word to POOP using everyday words. Par is shown before you start, so you always know the target.
| Name | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🦅 Eagle | Two or more under par — only possible with rare words |
| 🐦 Birdie | One under par |
| ⛳ Par | The shortest everyday route. A perfect game. |
| 💩 Bogey | One over par |
| 💩 Double bogey, +3… | Two or more over par. You still reached POOP! |
Controls
- Type the whole word and press Enter — the fastest way on a keyboard.
- Or tap a tile in the next row to pick which letter to change, tap the new letter, then Enter.
- Backspace restores the letter you just changed; ← → move between tiles.
- Undo removes your last step, as many times as you like.
- Hint: the first tap highlights which letter to change next, the second reveals the word. Hints are counted in your result.
Strategy: how to find the shortest ladder
1. Count the differences
The number of letters that differ from POOP is the absolute minimum number of steps. If par is higher than that, the puzzle needs a detour — a letter you'll change twice.
2. Work backwards from POOP
Only eight everyday words sit one step from POOP: POOL, POOR, PROP, PLOP, POMP, HOOP, LOOP and COOP. Almost every winning ladder passes through one of them, so ask yourself which one your start word can reach fastest.
3. Secure the double O
Every everyday word with OO in the middle (MOON, BOOK, FOOL, GOOD…) is at most three steps from POOP, while a typical word is five or six away. Getting the double O early is often the key move.
4. Use vowels as bridges
When a direct swap doesn't make a word, change a vowel first. Vowels connect far more words than consonants, so a quick detour through a vowel swap can open up the route.
Daily puzzles, streaks and difficulty
A new Poople unlocks every day at 08:00 UTC, and everyone in the world plays the same one. Solve it on consecutive days to build your streak — your stats live in your browser, no account needed. Puzzles are gentlest on Sunday and Monday (par 3–4), medium on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (par 5), and toughest on Thursday and Saturday (par 6 or more).
Missed a day? Replay it from the archive (it won't affect your streak), check the answers, or keep practicing with Poople Unlimited.
Where word ladders come from
Word ladders were popularized by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, who called them Doublets and published them in Vanity Fair in 1879. His first example turned HEAD into TAIL. A century later, computer scientist Donald Knuth studied the same puzzle as a graph problem — each word a node, each one-letter change an edge — which is exactly how Poople computes par for every puzzle.