How do you play hangman?
A word of 6 to 9 letters is hidden, one blank per letter. Guess a letter by typing it or tapping it. If the word has it, it appears in every place it occurs; if not, it is a miss and a part is added to the drawing. 6 misses complete the figure and end the game; fill in the whole word first to win. A new word comes with every game.
How is your Hangman result calculated?
If you find the word, your result is how many misses you made on the way: 0 is a perfect game. If the drawing is finished first, the result is how many of the word's different letters you found, and the word is shown. The time from Start to the end is shown beside it.
Which letters should you guess first?
The letters found in the most words. Counting across all 3,075 words this game can hide, these are the eight that appear in the most of them:
| Letter | Words that contain it |
|---|---|
| E | 71% |
| R | 52% |
| T | 49% |
| I | 48% |
| A | 47% |
| N | 42% |
| O | 38% |
| L | 36% |
The rarest are Q, J and Z. Once a few letters show, switch from frequency to the word's shape. In this list every Q is followed by U, and two endings are common: -ION (113 words, 76 of them -TION) and -ENT (87).
Where do the Hangman words come from?
From the two most common sizes of SCOWL, the word lists spell checkers are built on, checked against the ENABLE word list. Plurals, past tenses and -ing forms made from shorter words are left out, every word has at least four different letters, and offensive words are removed.
Where does hangman come from?
No one knows for sure. The earliest description usually cited is in Alice Bertha Gomme's collection of traditional games of 1894, under the name Birds, Beasts and Fishes, played with blanks for letters but without the drawing. For a word game with a clue at every step, try the Word Guess Game; for decoding a whole sentence, the Cryptogram.