THE DAILY RAILWORD

LEAVING TODAY:

Preparing today's departures...

Switch routes anytime. Each difficulty keeps its own progress.

DEPART FROM----
ARRIVE AT----
MOVES0
PAR–
RESTARTS0

New departures at 8 AM Pacific.

YOUR LINE OF TRAVEL
    BOARDING

    Preparing your current word...

    Setting the letters in place...

    ?
    Solid line: correct position Dots: different position Unmarked: no match

    Marks compare letters with home, not route distance. Underlined letters can still change.

    Tap a tile, type one letter, then confirm. Typing only previews a move.

    THE RULES OF THE RAILWAY

    One letter. One stop.

    Travel from the starting word to the visible target. Every move replaces exactly one letter, and the result must be in this game's word list.

    Tap a tile, type one A–Z letter, then press Enter or Make move. Typing only previews the change. Cancel or select another tile to discard it.

    Choose Local (4 letters), Regional (5), or Long-haul (6). Switch difficulty whenever you like. Each route keeps its own progress, hints and restart count, so you can come back later. Accepted moves and successful hints save that route; invalid attempts and typing spend nothing. Start over resets only the current route after an accepted transform.

    Four- and five-letter starts have no correct-position matches with home; six-letter starts have at most one. Matches in other positions are still possible.

    Par is the fewest transforms to reach home without a bonus. Invalid attempts are free. Revisits count as moves. The optional Coaling Station has a clue instead of a revealed word: land on its word to deduct that landing move once. You may skip it. Counted moves and total transforms are shown separately.

    Your route stays on the board: each accepted word becomes a station. The engine travels to your new stop, and the changed letter flips into place. Returning to an earlier word adds another stop, not a shortcut through your history.

    Green with a solid underline means the letter matches the destination in that position. Gold with a dotted underline means it matches in another position. An unmarked dark tile has no remaining match. These marks describe the last accepted word, not an unconfirmed preview or graph distance. Underlined letters are not locked and may need to change again.

    You have two ticket hints per route each day. A smudged destination reveals most letters of an unfamiliar, unvisited stop on a shortest route from your current word to home. It is a waypoint, not a list of moves. Routes favour fresh stops and familiar vocabulary; necessary backtracking is explained. Pocket a ticket and reopen it without spending another hint.

    Restarting or switching away and back never refills that route's used hints or claimed Coaling Station credit. The free landing is available once per route each day; if you have not claimed it, it remains available after a restart. Local, Regional and Long-haul progress are saved separately in this browser; refreshing isn't a restart. New departures arrive worldwide at 8 AM Pacific, with daylight saving handled automatically. A journey in progress is not discarded at rollover.

    Give up finishes only the current route for the day, even with no moves. After confirmation, the closing screen explains your moves and reveals a minimum route. You cannot make more moves, request hints, or restart that route today, but the other difficulties remain available. A new day brings new routes.

    The demo timetable has 182 preselected days, with one Local, Regional, and Long-haul choice each day: 546 puzzles altogether. It covers October 6, 2026 through April 5, 2027, then repeats. Point scoring is being refined; this edition focuses on moves, par, free stops, and hint usage.

     Engineering the Engine

    The Firebox

    The first version was a Python tool for exploring word ladders. In the browser game, the route engine also checks each puzzle's par and chooses words for clue tickets.

    Finding the shortest route

    Words are connected when they differ in one position. A breadth-first search from the destination finds the fewest changes needed from every reachable word. The game can reuse those distances after each move instead of searching again from the player's new word. Counting matching letters cannot establish par because a legal route may need to change a letter that already matches the target.

    Choosing the word list

    A common-word-only list removes useful connections. An unrestricted dictionary can send a route through archaic or obscure words. The game uses SCOWL's standard American-English spelling list, with a small set of exclusions. Moves, clues and par all use this accepted list. Frequency estimates help choose between equally short routes; they do not make a word legal.

    Checking the daily puzzles

    A Python tool prepares 182 days of puzzles, with three word lengths each day. All 546 puzzles are checked against the game dictionary for their minimum move count and a Coaling Station word on at least one shortest route. Generating puzzles during play would require those same checks on each device. Preparing the bank offline allows the whole schedule to be verified before release. It repeats after six months.

    Keeping calculations off the main thread

    Route calculations run in a web worker. Running them on the main browser thread could delay typing and animation while the word network is being searched. The game is otherwise static HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so GitHub Pages can host it without a separate solver service. A hosted solver would add network calls during play and another service to maintain.

    Partial words for clues

    A clue ticket reveals most of an unvisited word on a shortest route. One letter is missing in four- and five-letter puzzles, two in six-letter puzzles. Giving the full route would solve the puzzle; a single-letter instruction gives little context for planning ahead. A partial word gives the player a destination to work toward while leaving the moves to them.

    Credits

    The starting concept came from playing Poople, a one-letter-at-a-time word puzzle.

    Game vocabulary uses Kevin Atkinson's English Speller Database / SCOWL, American English, standard size 60, release 2026.02.25, with the game filters described above. Copyright 2000–2026 Kevin Atkinson. Word-list permission notice.

    Puzzle preparation and bundled word-frequency ranks use Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords / OpenSubtitles2018, revision 072bbed, CC BY-SA 4.0.

     BACK TO THE PLATFORM

    Take this journey again?

    This route's track will clear and its restart count will increase by one. Its starting word, target, par, used hints and any claimed Coaling Station credit stay the same. An unclaimed free stop remains available. Other difficulties keep their progress.

     THE DAILY RAILWORD

    Find your route home.

    Each word is a train station along your path home. Change one letter, picking a new word and the next stop.

    Choose your route length: Local for a quick trip, Regional for a scenic, more intentional journey, or Long-haul for a tougher challenge.

    Switch routes anytime; each keeps its own progress. Two hints and a free Coaling Station stop can help.

     LEFT BEHIND ON THE PLATFORM

    Someone else's ticket.

    ONE WAY / AN EARLIER DEPARTURE DESTINATION USED TICKET / NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL

    DESTINATION REACHED

    You Made it Home!

    An optimal route

       END OF THE LINE

      Finish this journey?

      This reveals an optimal route and ends your attempts on this route for today. You won't be able to restart it, but you can still play the other difficulties.

       REPAIR THE TICKET

      Replace this invalid save?

      The invalid save will be replaced with the valid route currently on screen. Other routes are kept when their saved records can be read. If no route has started, only the invalid record is cleared. This does not spend a move or count as a restart.