Puzzle #001 on 2026-11-14 starts at ALOE. Par 4.
One shortest path is ALOE → FLOE → FLOP → PLOP → POOP.
Letter 1 changes from A to F: ALOE becomes FLOE. CMUdict lists ALOE as AE1 L OW2 and FLOE as F L OW1. This step involves those listed pronunciations only. The listed phone strings differ. A changed letter is not, by itself, a sound change, and this is not a word root. Same ending letters as POOP, not a historical root: COOP, GOOP, HOOP, LOOP.
Letter 4 changes from E to P: FLOE becomes FLOP. CMUdict lists FLOE as F L OW1 and FLOP as F L AA1 P. This step involves those listed pronunciations only. The listed phone strings differ. A changed letter is not, by itself, a sound change, and this is not a word root. Same ending letters as POOP, not a historical root: COOP, GOOP, HOOP, LOOP.
Letter 1 changes from F to P: FLOP becomes PLOP. CMUdict lists FLOP as F L AA1 P and PLOP as P L AA1 P. This step involves those listed pronunciations only. The listed phone strings differ. A changed letter is not, by itself, a sound change, and this is not a word root. Same ending letters as POOP, not a historical root: COOP, GOOP, HOOP, LOOP.
Letter 2 changes from L to O: PLOP becomes POOP. CMUdict lists PLOP as P L AA1 P and POOP as P UW1 P. This step involves those listed pronunciations only. The listed phone strings differ. A changed letter is not, by itself, a sound change, and this is not a word root. Same ending letters as POOP, not a historical root: COOP, GOOP, HOOP, LOOP.
Puzzle 001 is the 2026-11-14 ladder. It starts at ALOE and reaches POOP. Par is 4. That count is a shortest path in Poopleword's own word list, from breadth-first search at build time. It is not a claim that poople.io uses the same optimum. One published shortest ladder is ALOE, FLOE, FLOP, PLOP, POOP. Step 1 changes letter 1 of ALOE to make FLOE. Step 2 changes letter 4 of FLOE to make FLOP. Step 3 changes letter 1 of FLOP to make PLOP. Step 4 changes letter 2 of PLOP to make POOP. Each accepted play changes exactly one letter, and every step has to be in the list. A longer route still finishes, but it is not par. Players of this site share one game date. Poopleword rolls that date at 08:00 UTC. The cut is this site's rule, not a time published by poople.io. Poopleword is a separate site from poople.io. The lists and shortest answers are not guaranteed to match. The shared target word is not an affiliation. Yesterday and older dates on this site exist only from the launch game date forward. Dates before launch are not given numbers.
poople.io is a different game. This answer belongs to Poopleword. The word list and the shortest path here are not a match for that site, and this is not an official note from it.