Chainagram

About Chainagram

Chainagram is a daily word game from Puzzle Trail, the site of puzzle maker Paul Ratcliffe, with a copyright from 2022. It starts from the word ladder, where you change one letter at a time to get from one word to another, and adds anagrams: at each link you change one letter and may then rearrange all five.

Each day there is a main puzzle, Today's Chainagram, with three links to fill between a start word and an end word. Finishing it unlocks bonus chains: one link, two links and a longer one with four, called The Big One. Every word in the chain has five letters. The game marks each entry as it goes, one tick for being one letter different from the word before and one for being in its dictionary, which uses American spelling. If it rejects a word you are sure of, you can dispute it and add it to your own list.

The game counts how many extra checks and reveals you used, and you can share your result. There are Normal, Timed and Hard ways to play, a German version called Bersabik, and more than one valid chain is often possible.

It suits players who like Weaver-style ladders but want the extra step of rearranging the letters each time.

How to play Chainagram

1. Open Chainagram and read the start word and the end word of Today's Chainagram.
2. For the first empty link, change one letter of the word above and rearrange the five letters into a new word.
3. Watch the two marks: one shows the word is one letter different, the other that it is in the dictionary.
4. Fill every link until the chain reaches the end word.
5. Once the main chain is done, play the bonus chains of one, two and four links.

Tips

• Work backwards too: the Reverse chain button flips the puzzle so you can start from the end word.
• Type the letters you know must stay, add a question mark as a placeholder, and shuffle them to see possible words.
• Look at which letters the start and end words do not share; each link has to trade one of them away.
• There can be several valid chains, so a word that is not in the game's solution can still be right.

Questions