A daily four-letter ladder. Change one letter. Every step stays a real word. The last word is FEET.
Feetle hands you one four-letter word and asks for a chain that ends on FEET. Each move replaces a single letter. The new row has to be a word the game already accepts. You repeat that until the tiles spell FEET. A chain that arrives is a solution. The chain with fewer steps is the one worth keeping.
This is not a hidden-word guess. You can see the start word, and the ending never changes. The work is the path between them. Two players can both finish, and the shorter ladder wins. Meaning does not score. FEET is a body part and also just four letters. The board only cares about the letters.
The frame at the top loads the Feetle board itself. Daily opens first, which is the shared puzzle. Unlimited swaps in the replay board, still aimed at FEET, without the wait for the next reset. This page does not print today's shortest path. Type the rungs in the frame.
Lay the current word over the word you want to type. Count the positions that differ. One difference is a candidate step. Two differences is at least two steps, and only if a real word sits between them. BEET to FEET changes the first letter, B to F, and leaves E, E, and T alone. That is one step. BEST to FEET changes the first letter and the third letter. That leap is illegal even though both rows are real words.
The order of a legal chain is a sequence of neighbors, not a sentence. You may walk through a word you would never say aloud if the list contains it and exactly one box moved. You may not skip a rung because the jump "feels close." If the frame rejects the row, compare it with the previous word position by position before you retype it.
Feetle does not let the word grow or shrink. FEET cannot become FEETS, and it cannot become FEE by dropping the T. Players who solve crosswords sometimes treat a shorter cousin as near enough. On this ladder, near enough is still the wrong length. Four letters in, four letters out, every rung.
The lock is what makes a short path mean something. If you could delete letters, the puzzle would collapse into a different game. Keep the length fixed in your head before you hunt for a clever plural or a name that happens to be close.
FEET is F, E, E, T. The two E letters sit in the second and third positions. A step may create that pair, or it may break one of them. FELT to FEET changes the third letter, L to E, and suddenly both middle letters match. MEET to FEET changes only the first letter. The double E was already there, so you do not spend a move building it.
Treat the pair as two slots, not as one object. A word can share one E with FEET and still be two edits away if another box is also wrong. Write the slots on paper if the repeated vowel starts to blur. The count of different positions is the count that matters.
Changing a single E is still one edit, even though the other E stays. FEET to FELT changes the third letter only. FEET to FRET changes the second letter only. Players sometimes try to "fix the double" by replacing both E letters in one move. FEET to FACT does that, and more: the second, third, and fourth letters all move. The board will refuse it. Change one slot, land on a word, then change the next slot.
The same rule stops a leap from a different double into this one. BOOK to FEET shares nothing useful and is not a step. If your current word has a double that is not EE, you still owe a neighbor that the list accepts. You do not get a discount because both words "have a pair."
Every finished ladder walks through a word that is one letter away from FEET. There is no side entrance. Learn those doors before you wander. If your current row is already a door, take the last step and stop. Extra sightseeing after that only adds rungs.
A door the list rejects is not a door, even if you would accept it in conversation. When a hopeful last word fails, pick another neighbor. Do not spend the clock arguing with a missing entry.
Forward typing favors words you like. Those words are often off the path. Start at FEET and list real one-letter neighbors. Then list their neighbors. You are drawing a small map whose center is the finish. Today's start word sits on that map, or a ring or two further out. When you see it, read the rings inward. That reading is a candidate for the short path.
The first minute feels slow because you are not mashing the keyboard in the frame. That minute is where a two-rung detour gets deleted. If you only search forward, you will often arrive by a route that works and is longer than the route sitting next to the ending.
Seven shapes are worth remembering because each one differs from FEET in a single slot. BEET and MEET change the first letter. FEAT changes the third letter, E to A. FEEL and FEED change the fourth letter, T to L or T to D. FELT changes the third letter, E to L. FRET changes the second letter, E to R. They are not the same door. A ladder that reaches FEEL still needs one more step. A ladder that reaches FREE does not, because FREE differs in two places.
You do not have to force every puzzle through BEET. The list is a menu. Pick the door that reuses letters the start word already has. If the start word begins with M and already has EE, look at MEET before you rebuild the whole row. If it already ends in T and starts with F, you may be one vowel away, and FEAT or FELT is the check.
Write today's start word under FEET and mark the positions that already agree. Those positions are free. Letters that differ are the ones you must spend. A start word that already contains EE is much closer than a word that shares nothing, even when the shared pair is not yet in the right slots. You may need a bridge when the direct replacement is not in the list. You should still know the minimum before you roam.
Hold a correct letter unless you can name the word that gives it back. Changing an E to something else, then changing it back, costs two rungs and returns you to a row you had left. That pair is the most common way a legal solution becomes a bad score.
FREE and FEET share an F and two E letters, so the eye merges them. Compare the slots. FREE is F, R, E, E. FEET is F, E, E, T. The second letter and the fourth letter both differ. The third letter is E either way. That is two edits, not one. A player who types FREE as the last move from FEET will get a rejection, because a last move has to change a single box.
Any time a word feels one nudge away, count before you type. If the count is two or three, you need a bridge word the list actually stores. Guessing the bridge from a theme, such as words about walking, will not make the count smaller.
This chain is a teaching ladder for this page. It is not today's puzzle, and it is not a claim about the official shortest path on any date. The start word BENT is here because each hop is easy to see. Play the real board in the frame.
BENT to BEET changes the third letter, N to E. BEET to FEET changes the first letter, B to F. Two steps, two single edits, and every row is an ordinary English word. If you cannot point at the one letter that moved, the step is not ready to submit.
The first hop does not touch the F. It builds the double E while keeping the final T, which FEET needs. A hop is allowed to prepare a letter instead of scoring one that already matches. It is not allowed to fix two slots at once. BENT to FEET would try to change N and B together. That leap feels short and is illegal.
BEET to FEET is the last door, not a comment on insects. Meaning is irrelevant. Feetle will accept a dull neighbor and reject a charming word that moves two boxes. If you wait for a step that also works as a sentence, you will add rungs the puzzle does not require.
The daily start word is chosen by the game and printed in the frame. Some days it will already be a door, and the puzzle is one step. Some days it will share no letters with FEET, and the bridges will run through words you do not use at breakfast. BENT stays in this paragraph so the example does not move. If you type BENT into the frame and the board rejects it, you are on today's puzzle. Use the word the frame shows.
A path that solved a different start word fails as soon as the first rung does not neighbor the row on screen. The habit that transfers is the check: one letter, a real word, and a door you can name. The letters themselves have to be earned on the day you play.
Daily is the shared ladder. Unlimited is the same kind of board without that day's single-run lock, so you can practice another chain to FEET after you finish, or instead of waiting. The buttons above the frame only change which of those two game addresses is loaded. They do not open a hint list. Fullscreen gives the tiles more room on a small screen.
If a how-to note appears inside the frame the first time, it belongs to the game. Close it there and the tiles are yours to type on. A blank frame after a network slip needs a reload. The ladder is not stored in this page's HTML. Progress stays with the game. If you come back and the start word has changed, the daily reset has already happened.
The other word games on this site are separate. Today's Waffle is the swap grid on the homepage. Poople is a ladder too, and it ends on a different word. Finish Feetle, then open the other if you want a second board.
The usual wasted rung is a letter you restore. You change a correct E so you can reach a word you like, then you spend the next step putting the E back. That pair added two and returned you to a row you had already left. Name the word that will restore the letter before you abandon it. If you cannot name it, change a different slot.
The second waste is a shape that looks legal and misses the list. One box changed, and the frame still refuses the row. Retyping the same string does not create a dictionary entry. Try a different position. If you have no neighbors left, the previous rung parked you in a corner. Step back to a word with more exits.
The third waste is a theme. Body words, animal words, and rhymes feel like progress because they are easy to say. Feetle does not pay for a theme. A plain bridge into BEET or FEEL beats a charming chain that loops through the zoo. Score the positions, not the mood.
The ladder is typed inside the frame. The buttons outside the frame only choose daily or unlimited, or send the frame to fullscreen.
| Action | Where | Control |
|---|---|---|
| Play today's ladder | Above the frame | Daily |
| Play another ladder | Above the frame | Unlimited |
| Enter a one-letter change | Inside the frame | Type the word |
| Submit the rung | Inside the frame | Enter |
| Enlarge the board | Above the frame | Fullscreen |