Hangman Lab
About Hangman Lab
Hangman is one of the few games that needs nothing but a board and a word, which is why it has lasted in classrooms for well over a century. Most hangman sites stop at the game. Hangman Lab is built around the part teachers and families actually spend time on: finding good words.
What's here
- A game you can play anywhere, with a keyboard, a mouse or a phone, three difficulty levels and hints, plus a daily puzzle with streaks.
- 25 hangman word lists, from easy to the hardest words we could find, and 60 categories for every holiday and school unit.
- 89 spelling lists for kindergarten through 8th grade, each built around one spelling pattern, and 14 sight word lists.
- A printable worksheet with an answer key for every list, and a printable maker for your own words.
- Ways to play together: send a word to a friend, build a whole game to share, or run a classroom snowman game on the board.
What makes it different: every word is scored
Every word on the site has been played by our solver, which guesses the way a sensible player does: it always picks the letter found in the most words that still fit. The number of wrong guesses it makes is the word's difficulty score, shown beside every word. It is why you can trust our "hard" list to be hard, and it is how we learned that three-letter words beat the solver far more often than long ones. How we pick our words explains the method and the sources.
Who it's for
Hangman Lab is written for adults: teachers, homeschool parents, tutors, ESL teachers and anyone who likes word games. The games are suitable for children to play, and the word lists are checked for classroom use, but the site isn't aimed at children and has no accounts or chat.
A note on the name
Some teachers prefer not to use hangman imagery at all, and we understand why. Every game on the site can be played with a melting snowman instead of the gallows, and the printables come in a snowman version. See alternatives to hangman.
Get in touch
Spotted a word that shouldn't be on a list, or need a list we don't have? Tell us.