How to Play Poople
- Look at today's start word.
- Change exactly one letter to make a new real four-letter word.
- Keep going, one letter per step, until the word becomes POOP.
- Fewer steps is better. Beat the shortest path to score a perfect ladder.
On the board, tap one of the four letter slots, then tap a letter on the keyboard (or type it). Press Enter to add the word to your ladder. Made a wrong turn? Undo takes back your last step, and Start over clears the ladder. The full rules, with a worked example, are on the how to play Poople page.
Poople Game Rules and Scoring
- Each step changes exactly one letter. You cannot swap letters around, and you cannot add or remove letters, so every word has four letters.
- Every word must be in the game's word list of about 2,000 common English words. Names, abbreviations and rude words are not included.
- You cannot use the same word twice on one ladder.
Every puzzle has a par: the smallest number of steps that can turn the start word into POOP. Daily start words are picked so par is between 3 and 6 steps. When you finish, your ladder gets a rating:
- Perfect: you matched par.
- Great: one or two steps over par.
- Good: three to five steps over par.
- Finished: you made it to POOP the long way round.
Your result comes with a share card made of colored squares, one row per step, that shows where you changed a letter without giving away any words. Your daily streak and number of solved puzzles are saved in your browser, so there is nothing to sign up for.
More Ways to Play
- Poople Unlimited: random ladders with no daily limit, in Easy, Medium and Hard.
- Poople hints: four levels of nudges for today's puzzle, from the step count to the first word.
- Poople solver: type any four-letter word and see the shortest ladder to POOP.
- Poople archive: every past puzzle with its start word and answer, including yesterday's.
- Poople answer today: the full shortest path for today's puzzle, kept folded until you open it.