Hangman

How to play Hangman

Hangman is one of the world’s most-loved word games — a simple pencil-and-paper classic that has entertained families, classrooms and friends for generations. A word is hidden and shown only as a row of blanks, one for each letter. You guess the word one letter at a time: every correct letter is filled into all the places it appears, while every wrong letter costs you a life and adds one more piece to the hangman drawing on the gallows. Reveal the whole word before the drawing is finished and you win; run out of guesses first and the round is lost. This version gives you a themed category hint for every word, an on-screen A–Z keyboard, physical-keyboard support, three difficulty levels and a ranked score, so a game that takes seconds to learn can be played for a high score again and again.

The goal

Your goal is to uncover the hidden word before you make too many wrong guesses. The word starts completely hidden, drawn as one blank underscore per letter, and a small tag tells you which category it belongs to — animals, countries, food, science and so on. Each turn you pick a letter. If that letter is somewhere in the word, every copy of it is revealed at once; if it is not, another part of the hangman is drawn. You win the instant the last hidden letter is filled in. You lose if the hangman drawing is completed first, which happens after six wrong letters. It is a race between your vocabulary and the six mistakes you are allowed.

Setting up a round

Every round the game secretly chooses one word from its dictionary using a seeded random pick, so the same starting seed always produces the same word — handy for fairness and testing. The word appears as blanks above the on-screen keyboard, the gallows stands empty, the wrong-guess counter reads zero and the timer starts as soon as you make your first guess. A category chip sits at the top so you always have a themed clue: knowing that the answer is a country or a musical instrument dramatically narrows the possibilities. Press New Word at any time to abandon the current word and deal a fresh one, and use the difficulty selector to change how long and how common the words are.

Rules of play

• The hidden word is shown as one blank for every letter. Words in this game are always single words made of the letters A to Z, with no spaces, hyphens or punctuation, so the number of blanks tells you exactly how long the answer is.
• On your turn, guess a single letter using the on-screen keyboard or your physical keyboard. Guessing is not case-sensitive, so “a” and “A” are the same move.
• If the letter appears in the word, every occurrence is revealed at once — guess E in “ELEPHANT” and both E’s light up. A correct guess does not cost you anything.
• If the letter is not in the word, it counts as a wrong guess: the counter goes up by one and the next piece of the hangman is drawn. You are allowed six wrong guesses; the sixth completes the figure and ends the round.
• Each letter can only be tried once. Used letters are disabled on the keyboard and coloured green when they were right and red when they were wrong, so you never waste a life repeating yourself and can always see what you have already tried.

Difficulty levels

Three difficulty levels change the pool of words the game draws from, based on word length — a good proxy for how tricky a word is to guess. Easy uses short, everyday words of three to five letters, so there are fewer blanks and common patterns are easy to spot. Medium uses six- and seven-letter words that need a little more thought. Hard draws long words of eight letters or more, including less common vocabulary, where every wrong guess really stings. The number of allowed wrong guesses stays at six on every level, so the gallows always fills at the same pace — only the words get tougher. Because the score rewards longer words, Hard also offers the highest ceiling for points.

How scoring works

Winning a round earns a score, and only wins are scored — a lost round is worth nothing. Your score starts from a base that depends on the difficulty (4,000 on Easy, 6,000 on Medium and 9,000 on Hard). From that base the game subtracts 300 points for each wrong letter you guessed and 1 point for each second you took, then adds a bonus of 50 points for every letter in the word. The final total is kept between 1 and 99,999. In short: solve the word quickly, with as few wrong guesses as possible, and on the hardest level with the longest words, to post your best result. Scores are stored per difficulty, and your best on this device is shown under the keyboard.

Strategy tips

• Start with the vowels. Almost every English word contains at least one of A, E, I, O or U, and E is the single most common letter in the language, so opening with the vowels usually reveals several blanks for free and shows you the shape of the word.
• After the vowels, try the most common consonants. The letters R, S, T, L, N and D appear in a huge share of words; testing them early fills in more blanks while risking little, because a good chunk of them will usually be present.
• Use the category. The themed hint is a real clue — if the category is “countries”, a pattern like _ _ _ _ A can point straight at a name ending in that letter, and knowing the theme lets you rule whole groups of letters in or out.
• Read the pattern of revealed letters. Once a few letters are showing, think about which letters can legally sit between them. Common endings like -ING, -TION or -ER and double letters often give the rest of the word away without another guess.
• Guard your last one or two lives. When you are close to losing, stop guessing rare letters like Q, X or Z on a hunch. Count the blanks you still need, list the words that fit the visible pattern and the category, and only then commit to a letter.

Frequently asked questions