Weaver tips and strategy

Before you type a single word, line up the start and end words and count the positions where they differ. That number is the minimum: each move changes one letter, so a puzzle with three differences can never be solved in fewer than three moves. Counting also tells you what kind of puzzle you are facing.

• If the result screen's optimal equals the number of differences, there is a straight run where every move turns a tile green.
• If the optimal is one more, exactly one of the differing letters has to change twice on the way.
• If it is two or more above, expect a real detour, possibly through a letter that already matched.

You do not see the optimal number until the end, but you can guess it. If no word fixes any of the differing letters in one step, you already know the ladder is longer than the count.

Lewis Carroll gave the most useful piece of advice in his 1879 introduction to the game: the easiest puzzles are the ones where consonants in one word line up with consonants in the other, and vowels with vowels. When they do not, his suggestion was to first turn one word into a word with the same pattern, after which "there is seldom much difficulty in completing" the ladder. His own example was HEAD to HARE:

HEAD has its vowels in the middle; HARE has a vowel in second and fourth position. HERD and HERE shift the pattern, and once the shape matches, the last letter falls into place. In practice: look at where the vowels are in the end word and aim for a word with the same vowel positions early on.

The vowel is the most flexible letter in most short words. Changing it moves you from one family of words to a completely different one, which is often the only way past a dead end. It even pays to change a vowel that is already correct. BLEW and KNEW share their last two letters, but any ladder that keeps the E needs seven moves and obscure words like CLEW and ALEF. Letting the E go is shorter:

The ladder gives up the green E for an O, walks through the -OW family, and only brings the E back at the very end. Five moves for a puzzle with two differences looks wasteful, but nothing shorter exists. If you are stuck with three or four green tiles and no word fits, try changing a green vowel.

A ladder can be read in both directions, and the end of it is often easier to see. Ask which words are one letter away from the end word. Some end words have dozens of neighbors, but many have only two or three, and then the second-to-last word is almost decided for you.

Take JURY. Its everyday neighbors are BURY and FURY, and not much else. So a puzzle that ends in JURY nearly always passes through BURY, and BURY connects to BUSY and BURN. Now look at JUST to JURY. They differ in only two letters, but JURT and JUSY are not words, so the direct route is closed:

Working backwards finds this ladder at once: JURY needs BURY, BURY needs BUSY, BUSY comes from BUST, and BUST is one step from JUST. The J has to leave and come back. A good habit is to plan the last two words of the ladder before you commit to the first two.

Some letter patterns accept almost any first letter, and those families are the highways of the game. If you can get into one, you can usually get out at the letter you need.

• Four letters: -ALL (BALL, CALL, FALL, HALL, MALL, TALL, WALL), -ATE (DATE, GATE, HATE, LATE, MATE, RATE), -INE (DINE, FINE, LINE, MINE, NINE, PINE, WINE), -OOK (BOOK, COOK, HOOK, LOOK, TOOK).
• Five letters: -IGHT (FIGHT, LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT), -OUND (BOUND, FOUND, HOUND, MOUND, POUND, ROUND, SOUND, WOUND), -ATER (LATER, WATER, HATER, EATER).

The reverse is also true. Words with unusual letters, such as J, Q, X or Z, tend to have few neighbors, and a few common words have none at all: ENVY cannot be turned into any other word by changing one letter. When a ladder leads you toward a word like that, check that you can get out again before you go in.

Pairs like CH, SH, TH, BL and ST look like single sounds, but in Weaver they are two letters and change one at a time. BOAT to SHIP shows how:

The C arrives first, then the H joins it to make CH, and only at the end does the C become an S to make SH. If the end word starts with a pair, think about which half of the pair you can add first.

A hint reveals the next word of a shortest ladder from your current last word. Because it starts from where you are, a hint after a long detour gets you back on the fastest track from there, but it cannot give you back the moves you already spent. That suggests a simple rule: if you are going to need help, it is worth more early. A hint taken before a detour keeps you on a shortest ladder; a hint taken after one can only limit the damage.

Hints are counted and shown with your result, so in the daily game, where shared results matter, try at least two different first moves of your own before using one. In Unlimited there is no streak at stake: take a hint whenever you want to see how a shortest ladder starts, then try to finish on your own.

The five-letter game rewards slightly different habits.

• Use plurals as bridges. A five-letter word ending in S is often a four-letter word plus S, and that S connects families that are otherwise far apart. HEART reaches BEATS in three moves through HEARS and BEARS.
• Expect fewer neighbors. Each five-letter word has fewer one-letter neighbors than a typical four-letter word, so dead ends are more common and ladders are longer. Plan two moves ahead.
• Keep shared blocks. Long words often share a block of three letters, such as -ORE or -EAD. Building the ladder around that block and changing the letters on either side is usually shorter than attacking the block.
• Try both ends. The first and last letters of a five-letter word usually have the most options: the first because so many words share a four-letter ending such as -IGHT or -OUND, the last because of endings like -S, -Y, -E and -D. When the middle of a word will not move, an end letter often will.

After every puzzle, the result screen shows one optimal ladder. Spend ten seconds comparing it with yours. Where did it leave the obvious path? Which bridge word did it use? Over a few weeks you will notice the same moves again and again, such as COME before CORE or BUSY before BURY, and those are exactly the moves that turn a solve one over the optimal into an optimal one.