How to Play Hangman

Hangman is a guessing game for two or more people, or one person against the computer. One player picks a secret word and shows only blanks for its letters. Everyone else guesses one letter at a time. Right guesses fill in the blanks, wrong guesses add a part to a drawing, and the game ends when the word is complete or the drawing is. This guide covers the setup, the turn order, how many guesses to allow, and how to play on this site.

What you need

On paper you need a pencil and a surface to draw on: a notebook page, a whiteboard, or a chalkboard. One player is the setter and everyone else is a guesser. In a classroom the teacher is usually the setter. At a table with family, players take turns in the role.

Choose a word before the game starts and keep it hidden. Write down one dash for each letter, spaced out so each dash is easy to point at. A word like planet gets six dashes. Beside the dashes, leave room for a row where you will write the wrong letters, so nobody guesses the same one twice.

How a turn works

A guesser names one letter. If the letter is in the word, the setter writes it on every dash where it belongs. Guess e for the word eleven and all three e's appear at once. If the letter is not in the word, the setter writes it in the wrong-letter row and draws the next part of the hangman.

Play passes to the next guesser, or the same guesser continues if you are playing solo. Many groups use one rule that saves arguments: a letter that has already been guessed, right or wrong, cannot be guessed again and does not cost a turn.

Most players announce the letter out loud and the setter repeats it back. That small habit prevents the common mistake of a setter writing a letter in the wrong place.

Repeated letters deserve a mention for new players. When a letter appears twice, both blanks fill at the same moment. A pattern like _ _ e _ _ e is therefore worth reading carefully, since it already tells you the letter e sits in two places.

Winning and losing

The guessers win by completing the word before the drawing is finished. They can do it by filling every dash, or by naming the whole word correctly at any point. The setter wins if the drawing is completed first.

A wrong guess at the whole word usually costs the same as a wrong letter: one more part of the drawing. Agree on that before you start, because it changes how bold people are willing to be.

Keep score across rounds if you like. A simple tally works: the guessers earn a point for each word they finish, the setter earns a point for each word that survives. Switching roles after every word keeps the game fair and gives each player a turn at choosing words, which is its own small spelling exercise.

The drawing stages

The classic drawing has ten stages, each one added for a wrong guess. In order they are the base, the upright post, the top beam, the rope, the head, the body, one arm, the other arm, one leg and the other leg. When the second leg goes on, the game is over.

If ten feels too long, draw the gallows before play begins and count only the figure. That gives you shorter games of six or eight wrong guesses. Our guide on how to draw hangman shows every stage and the shorter versions.

How many guesses to allow

The number of wrong guesses sets the difficulty more than the word does. Our online game uses three levels:

• Easy: 10 wrong guesses, the full drawing.
• Medium: 8 wrong guesses.
• Hard: 6 wrong guesses.

Picking a fair word

Short words are harder than they look. In our solver data a 3-letter word costs an average of 7.51 wrong guesses, while an 8-letter word costs 1.15. So a setter who wants a fair game for beginners should choose a word of seven or more letters, and a setter who wants a challenge should choose a three or four letter word such as fax or zoo. Both of those cost our solver 15 wrong guesses.

For younger players, pick words from a topic everyone knows and say the topic aloud. Our easy hangman words list is a good starting point, and the 5-letter list suits a middle level.

When you play with a mixed group, alternate hard and easy words so everyone wins sometimes. Words of 8 to 10 letters average about one wrong guess or fewer for our solver (1.15 at 8 letters, 0.63 at 10), which makes them comfortable warm-ups.

Playing online on this site

Choose a word list, pick Easy, Medium or Hard, and the game starts at once. You guess with the on-screen letters or your keyboard. The wrong-guess count and the drawing update after each miss.

There are four ways to play:

• Solo: the site picks a word from the list you chose.
• Daily: everyone gets the same word on a given day, so you can compare how many guesses it took.
• Two-player link: one person types a secret word and sends a link, and the other person guesses without seeing the word.
• Classroom snowman mode: a projector-friendly version where the drawing is a snowman that melts rather than a gallows, handy when you want a gentler picture.

Small rules worth settling first

Before the first round, agree on three things: whether the whole-word guess is allowed, whether phrases show their spaces, and whether the setter may give the topic. None of them is right or wrong. They simply prevent mid-game disputes. Our hangman rules guide lists the common variations and what each one does to the difficulty.