Poople Rules | One Letter at a Time, Every Step a Real Word
The rules look simple on the surface, and honestly they are, but the scoring underneath is where most people get lost, so I figured I'd lay out exactly how a valid move works and how par gets set, straight from the game itself, because there's a lot of half wrong info floating around out there.
The basic rules
One starting word a day, and it's the same for every single player, so there's no luck of the draw to hide behind. You change exactly one letter to make a new four letter word, and that new word has to be a real word, and it has to be exactly one letter different from the one before it. Then you keep going, one letter at a time, until you reach POOP. That's the whole game.
What counts as a valid move
A valid move changes exactly one letter and produces a real four letter word. Not two letters, not a reordering, just one letter swapped for another. And the word you land on has to be in the game's dictionary of around 2,300 valid words, all of which can reach POOP. So a move is valid when it's one letter different and lands on a word the game accepts.
How par is set
Par is the fewest moves it takes to reach POOP from the day's starting word, and it's not a human guess. The game runs a full graph search across all the valid four letter words, checking every possible one letter change from the start word and working outward until it reaches POOP. The first time it reaches POOP is the shortest path, and that number of moves is par. It's the same for everyone on a given day.
Par is the fewest moves it takes to reach POOP, computed by a full graph search of the word space, not just one possible route.
Why more than one path can win
A lot of players assume there's one "correct" ladder, but that's not right. More than one route can reach POOP in the exact same number of moves, so any route that finishes in par is equally valid. The game might show one example path, but if your ladder hits POOP in the same number of steps, you did it right, even if your words were different.
When the daily puzzle resets
Everyone gets the same starting word each day, and a new puzzle goes live once every 24 hours at 08:00 UTC. There's no second chance on the daily word, but nothing is lost either, every past start word is still browsable in the archive.
How it differs from Wordle
Wordle asks you to guess one hidden word in a fixed number of tries. Poople is a word ladder, which means you change one letter at a time and every step has to stay a real word. The target is always POOP, which gives the game its name and its theme. If you've played Weaver, Poople feels familiar, just with a funnier destination.