DECAY is a daily word-ladder puzzle built around subtraction. You begin with one word and make each next word by removing exactly one letter, then rearranging every letter that remains. The new entry must be a valid word and exactly one letter shorter than the word above it. Continue until you reach the day's minimum length.
The puzzle may contain several possible routes, so you are not trying to reproduce a single hidden chain. Look for familiar smaller words inside the current letters, and consider which removal leaves useful vowels and consonants for the following step. If a promising branch stalls, Undo lets you return without penalty and explore another route. Planning two moves ahead is often more valuable than finding the first legal word.
Submitting an invalid word adds a strike; asking for help records a hint. Neither prevents completion, but a clean run uses neither. Your result shows the path length, clean status, and daily streak without revealing the starting word or the words you entered. Because valid alternate paths are welcomed, a surprising route can be just as successful as an obvious one.
The numbered daily puzzle is shared by every player and changes at 00:00 UTC. A daily attempt updates your streak and lifetime statistics once, even if you reopen it later. Archive and Random past puzzle links open aired puzzles in practice mode instead. Practice keeps its own bounded history and never changes the daily result, streak, or lifetime distribution, so you can experiment freely after finishing today's descent. Keyboard players can type a word, submit it, and move through every control without a pointer.
Start with the top word. Make a new valid word that is exactly one letter shorter, using the remaining letters in any order.
Drop one letter at each step and keep descending until you reach a 3-letter word. Any valid path counts.
Undo is free if a path reaches a dead end. An invalid word costs a strike, so a clean descent is the goal.