A shortest-path claim should come with a word list and a method.
The source we checked
Our current data comes from the publicly available official Poople game, checked on 10 Nov 2026. It includes 2,398 four-letter words and the daily starting-word sequence. We extract data without executing downloaded game code. Our interface and solver are independently written.
How shortest paths are calculated
We connect two accepted words when they differ in exactly one position. A breadth-first search from POOP finds the minimum number of moves for every reachable word. We independently reproduced all 2,398 supplied word distances and checked 453 puzzle records against their distance labels.
Daily answer pages show every equivalent shortest path in the current archive. The interactive solver counts all routes and displays up to 50 at a time. We choose a stable alphabetical ordering. That ordering may differ from the path shown in the official game; equal-length valid routes remain equally short.
What “verified” means here
Verification means the extracted public data passes our format checks and our independent distance calculation. We have not manually played every move in the official interface. If the official word list changes, a previously computed answer may need to be checked again.
Historical records
The archive is reconstructed from the daily sequence in the currently available official data. It is not a collection of daily screenshots. We cannot establish that an older version never used a different sequence. Future puzzle entries are excluded from the published site.
Dates and updates
The checked game schedule resets at 08:00 UTC (16:00 in Beijing). A puzzle date refers to the UTC date on which that puzzle begins, rather than your local calendar date. Each dated daily page names the exact puzzle and date. The official sequence includes #0 (PICK), but its original release date is unconfirmed and is left undated. An unsuccessful data check must keep the last verified record instead of inventing a new answer.
Our difficulty labels
Easy means up to 5 moves; Moderate means 6; Tricky means 7; Hard means 8; Expert means 9 or more. These are our distance-based labels, not official ratings or a measure of how familiar each word will feel. See the difficulty distribution and monthly statistics.