Answers for Daily #11

The starting word was

First moves

6 words are one letter away from DOOR.

BOOR: noun A peasant.
MOOR: noun An extensive waste covered with patches of heath, and having a poor, light (and usually acidic) soil, but sometimes marshy, and abounding in peat; a heath.
POOR: adjective With no or few possessions or money, particularly in relation to contemporaries who do have them.
DOER: noun Someone who does, performs, or executes; an active person, an agent.
DOUR: adjective Stern, harsh and forbidding.
DOOM: noun Destiny, especially terrible.

DOOR → BOOR → BOAR → SOAR → STAR → STIR

Once the words before it are used, nobody can change STIR: a dead end, worth 3 extra points.

Every Daily hides one golden word a few moves from the start. This one was ROOT.

From DOOR, 2,140 words can be reached one letter at a time.

Definitions from Wiktionary