word ladder

plural word ladders

1. A kind of puzzle in which one word must be transformed into another specified word of the same length by changing one letter at a time, each step yielding a valid intermediate word, as in lead → load → goad → gold.
2. crosswordingA type of cryptic crossword clue in which the each word in the clue defines a single term each varying by a single letter, and all the terms together form a word ladder between the first half of the solution and the second half.

   But his real genius lay in the devising of many entirely new types of crossword, some of which have found enthusiastic imitators . 'Printer's Devilry', 'Playfair', and 'Word-Ladder' , for instance, were his invention

   1954, The Listener

   2 more examples

   In the word ladder each rung is a six-letter word which has five letters in common with each of its neighbours (e.g. DISTIL, LISTED, STRIDE, EDITOR, etc). The rungs to be entered in the diagram are not clued but must be deduced from the other rungs which are

   1990 10, Listener and BBC Television Review

   Some of Morph's politically themed crosswords stick out: the puzzle where BLAIR changed to BROWN word-ladder-style in the grid via BLAIN/BRAIN/BRAWN and the one featuring various items claimed on expenses by MPs: DUCK ISLAND and so on.

   2012 August 17, Alan Connor, “Crossword blog: meet the setter - Micawber/Morph”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)

   Synonyms: doublet, laddergram