Word Ladder Puzzle Game (and Puzzle Solver)

Here's a word ladder puzzle game (and solver) I wrote a while back. A word ladder is a string of words that change one letter at a time. For example: "cat", "cot", "dot", "dog" is a word ladder that connects "cat" and "dog". I tweaked the game to run as a standalone application (instead of a java applet). The source code is on github:

https://github.com/sevkeifert/wordladder-game-solver

The game:

The puzzle solver: