THE MARGIN NOTES

Small steps.
Clear credits.

Quillstep is an original browser word-ladder game, inspired by the renewed November 2026 writing challenges. Its chapter lexicons, interface, scoring and JavaScript engine were created for this edition. The word-ladder idea itself is a classic.

Algorithm reference: aliezzahn/word-ladder, an MIT-licensed Rust breadth-first search implementation. Observed: 24 GitHub stars; last push February 24, 2025. No Rust code or upstream word list is shipped. This is an original fallback, not a browser port of that project.

Topical reference: Writing Month, November 2026. This independent game has no affiliation with that challenge.

Artwork: four coordinated storybook scenes generated with the built-in GPT image tool, bundled locally as a single optimized WebP atlas. Fonts are native system and Georgia fonts. No external assets or runtime services are used.

The complete playable source is the readable HTML, CSS and JavaScript served with this page. See MIT license and source metadata.

Progress is stored only in this browser’s local storage. Clearing site data clears collected chapters.