Daily Brains · launder a dirty word into a clean one, one letter at a time.
Word Laundering is the word-ladder puzzle in Daily Brains (/daily). Each day hands everyone the same dirty word and the same clean word, MUD and TUB or SMOKE and WHITE, and you wash one into the other a letter at a time. Every word along the way has to be a real everyday word. The puzzle sits inside a washing machine: the drum spins on every rinse, letters that already match the clean word come out spotless, and the water clears as you get closer.
STORY & LORE
A little story every day
Each puzzle pairs something grubby (a muddy pig, a stinky sock, a puff of smoke) with something fresh (a bubbling tub, crisp linen, brilliant white), drawn from about 125 dirty and 118 clean themed words. The clothesline above the machine pegs up every word you hang out, with the goal word waiting at the far end.
Always solvable, with a real par
Every day's pair is checked with a breadth-first search over the game's 5,300-word dictionary. Par is the true shortest wash, not a guess. The route itself is never stored in the page: the game solves it in your browser when it needs it, for hints and for the reveal at the end.
The dictionary
About 440 three-letter, 1,540 four-letter, 1,950 five-letter and 1,360 six-letter everyday English words, hand-picked for a family audience. There are no names or abbreviations, and no plain plurals or -s verb forms (CATS, HITS) when the base word is in the list.
HOW IT PLAYS
Rinsing
Tap a letter in the drum (or use the arrow keys) and type a new one. The pill under the drum tells you straight away whether the new word is legal, then Rinse (or Enter) commits it. Undo is free and unlimited, and you can't reuse a word you've already been through.
The weekly ramp
Monday · Gentle: 3-letter words, par 3–4. Tuesday · Easy: 4 letters, par 4–5. Wednesday · Steady: 4 letters, par 5–6. Thursday · Tricky: 3–5 letters, and you may also add or remove a letter, par 5–6. Friday · Hard: 5 letters, swaps only, par 5–8. Saturday · Tough: 3–6 letters with add and remove, par 6–8. Sunday · Fiendish: add and remove plus a stain letter that may not appear in any word after the start, par 7–10.
Adding and removing letters
On Thursday, Saturday and Sunday small + gaps sit between the letters. Tap a gap and type to add a letter there, or select a letter and press ⌫ to wash it out.
Hints
A hint costs 150 points and lights up where the next change should go: which letter to change, which to remove, or which gap to fill. It never tells you the word. If you've wandered into a dead end, the hint says so and suggests an undo.
Scoring and sharing
A finished wash scores 1000, minus 100 for each rinse over par and 150 per hint (never below 100). Matching par earns gold 🥇 Spotless, par +1 silver 🥈, par +2 bronze 🥉. Giving up ends the day with 0 and shows a par route. The share line shows the words, your rinse count against par and one bubble per rinse: 🫧 for a step that got closer, 🟨 for a sideways one.
DIFFICULTY BY WEEKDAY
| Day | Letters | Moves | Par |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday · Gentle | 3 | Swap | 3–4 |
| Tuesday · Easy | 4 | Swap | 4–5 |
| Wednesday · Steady | 4 | Swap | 5–6 |
| Thursday · Tricky | 3–5 | Swap, add, remove | 5–6 |
| Friday · Hard | 5 | Swap | 5–8 |
| Saturday · Tough | 3–6 | Swap, add, remove | 6–8 |
| Sunday · Fiendish | 3–6 | Swap, add, remove + stain letter | 7–10 |
REWARDS
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Finish the wash | 15 Tickets |
| Match par with no hints (perfect) | +25 Tickets |
| First Load (first finished wash) | 🧺 Bronze · 10 Tickets |
| Spotless (par, no hints) | ✨ Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Rinse & Repeat (3-day streak) | 🫧 Bronze · 15 Tickets |
| Full Week's Wash (7-day streak) | 🧼 Gold · 40 Tickets |
| Laundry Legend (30-day streak) | 👑 Legendary · 100 Tickets |
VERSION HISTORY
- Launch version in Daily Brains.
- Washing-machine board with a clothesline trail, stains that wash out letter by letter, and water that clears as you get closer.
- Weekday difficulty ramp from Gentle 3-letter Mondays to Fiendish Sundays with add/remove and a stain letter.
- 5,300-word family-friendly dictionary; a 371-day solver-checked schedule with no repeated pair inside any year.
- Position-only hints, free undo, par medals, streaks, statistics and a spoiler-free share line.