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About Leapword

A free daily word chain puzzle — connect words through meaning.

Leapword is a daily word puzzle game where you connect a start word to an end word by building a chain of semantically related words. Each day brings a new puzzle to solve. Think of it like Wordle, but instead of guessing letters, you're leaping between ideas.

How It Works

Every day, you're given two words — a start and an end. Your job is to bridge the gap between them using intermediate words that are meaningfully connected to each other.

In this example, each word connects naturally to the next: fire produces heat, heat is associated with summer, summer brings vacations, and vacations happen at the beach.

Rules

• Each word in your chain must have a real semantic relationship with its neighbors — synonyms, antonyms, cause-and-effect, category associations, and thematic links all count.
• You have 6 attempts to complete your chain. Each failed attempt costs one try.
• Words must be real English words with a dictionary definition.
• Common function words (articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions) cannot be used as chain links. For example, "the", "and", "of", and "it" are not valid leaps.
• The shorter your chain, the better your score.

Scoring

Your performance is rated by how many intermediate links you use to complete the chain:

Chain Length	Rating
1–2 links	Excellent
3–4 links	Good
5–6 links	Fair
7+ links	Needs improvement

Game Modes

Leapword offers several ways to play:

• Daily Challenge — A new puzzle every day at midnight. Compete with friends and players worldwide on the global leaderboard. Track your streak and see how you compare.
• Custom Words — Pick your own start and end words to create a personalized puzzle. Great for challenging friends or practicing specific word associations. This mode is completely free.
• Infinite Mode — Endless randomly generated puzzles with no daily limit. Available to premium subscribers, or unlock it for 24 hours by watching a short ad.
• Hard Mode — For experienced players. Your chain must be 4 links or fewer. Toggle it on in Settings for an extra challenge.

Word Relationships

Leapword validates connections using a comprehensive word relationship engine. The types of connections that work include:

• Synonyms — words with similar meanings (happy → joyful)
• Antonyms — words with opposite meanings (hot → cold)
• Category members — words in the same group (dog → cat)
• Cause and effect — one thing leads to another (rain → flood)
• Part and whole — components of something (wheel → car)
• Thematic associations — words connected by theme (ocean → whale)
• Triggered associations — words that naturally follow each other (peanut → butter)

The broader the connection types you consider, the more creative your chains can be. Thinking laterally often leads to shorter, more elegant solutions.

Tips and Strategy

1. Think broadly. Don't just think of direct synonyms. Consider associations, categories, and thematic links to find shorter paths.
2. Work from both ends. Sometimes it's easier to think backwards from the end word and meet in the middle.
3. Use pivot words. Some words have many connections across different topics. Words like "light", "fire", "water", or "heart" can bridge very different concepts.
4. Avoid getting stuck in one category. If your start word is "ocean" and your end word is "music", don't keep chaining ocean-related words. Look for a word that pivots you toward the target.
5. Practice with Custom mode. Try creating your own puzzles to develop an intuition for how words connect.

Leaderboard

Sign in with Google to appear on the daily leaderboard. Your ranking is based on chain length (shorter is better) and number of mistakes. The all-time leaderboard tracks win streaks and overall win percentage across all daily puzzles.

Premium

Leapword is free to play. Premium subscribers get unlimited Infinite Mode, extra hints, access to the puzzle archive, exclusive themes, and an ad-free experience. Subscriptions are available monthly or yearly, with secure payment through Stripe.