Word Ladder: which companies ask it and how to practise

Word Ladder is a Hard problem that 38 companies are reported to ask. This page shows who, how often and how recently, what the question tests, and how to practise it out loud with an interviewer who asks follow-ups. We link to the original problem statement instead of copying it.

Which companies ask Word Ladder?

Public company lists attribute Word Ladder, a Hard problem, to 38 companies. The most frequent askers are Navan, Reddit and Yelp. 7 reports are from the last six months. It mainly tests hash table, string and breadth-first search. Use this as a practice guide, not a promise.

Practise this kind of question aloud

Who asks Word Ladder

38 companies appear in the public lists for this question. By how often each is reported: Navan (very often), Reddit (very often), Yelp (very often), Snap (very often), LinkedIn (very often), The Trade Desk (very often), Box (often), eBay (often), Okta (often) and Amazon (often), and 28 more. 7 of them were reported in the last six months, LinkedIn, Amazon and Citadel among them.

These are candidate reports collected in public lists, not statements from the companies. They are a good guide to what to practise and a poor guide to what you will be asked: interviewers change questions, and the same company asks different questions by team and level. Last reviewed 25 October 2026.

What Word Ladder tests

It is rated Hard, so a correct brute force with a clear path to the better idea is a good result; interviewers watch how you reason when the answer is not obvious and how you use their hints.

A hash table trades memory for speed: remembering what you have seen turns a repeated search into a lookup. Interviewers want you to say that trade-off and the cost of collisions or a bad key.

String problems test careful index handling and knowing which characters you may assume. Say out loud whether the input is ASCII, whether case matters, and what an empty string should return.

Breadth-first search explores level by level, so it finds the shortest path when every step costs the same. Say what goes in the queue and when you mark a node visited.

How to practise it

Do not just solve it silently. In a real interview you explain the approach before you code, write while you talk, and defend the solution to follow-ups. Set a timer, say the brute force and its cost first, then improve it, and finish by stating the time and space complexity and two edge cases you tested.

On giveinterview you can take this kind of question as a spoken interview: the AI interviewer opens with the problem, watches you code, asks cross-questions and ends with a scorecard. Your first 3 single-question interviews are free for life, every interview report is free, and a new account also gets 6 welcome credits.

Read the original statement here: https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/ (opens the publisher's page). The statement is theirs; we do not reproduce it.

Questions to practise next

If you can solve Word Ladder, try these next, chosen because they share its main topic and many of the same companies: Two Sum (Easy), LRU Cache (Medium), Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (Medium), Group Anagrams (Medium), Top K Frequent Elements (Medium) and Subarray Sum Equals K (Medium). Each has its own page in the questions list.

Frequently asked questions

Is Word Ladder asked at Amazon?

Amazon appears in the public lists for Word Ladder, reported often. Treat that as a reason to practise it, not a promise you will be asked it.

How hard is Word Ladder?