Idioms · sayings · seasonal phrases
Phrase Hangman
Whole phrases instead of single words: idioms, everyday sayings, funny tongue twisters and seasonal phrases. The gaps between words are shown, so you can work on the short words first.
Why phrases play differently
A phrase gives you more to work with than a single word. The spaces show how many words there are and how long each one is, and English phrases lean heavily on a few short words: the, of, a, in, on. Solve one of those and the rest of the phrase often falls into place, which is why phrase rounds tend to be faster than hard single words, and why they suit a whiteboard game with a class.
Apostrophes are shown from the start, so "santa's workshop" appears as ____'_ ________.
Getting more out of phrase rounds
- Go for the shortest word first. A two-letter word has only a handful of possibilities.
- Use the category. An idiom will be a fixed expression; a seasonal phrase will use that holiday's vocabulary.
- With English learners, talk about the meaning once it's solved. Idioms like "piece of cake" rarely mean what they say. The idioms list has notes on each.
More phrase lists: everyday hangman phrases, funny phrases, phrases for adults and full sentences.
Phrase rules on this site
A phrase is solved when every letter is found, the same as a word, and a letter you guess is revealed in every word of the phrase at once. That is why a single good guess, such as e or t, can light up four or five blanks in a phrase where it would only fill one in a short word. It also means a phrase can be lost to rare letters: a z in "pizza party" costs nothing once found but is rarely guessed early.
Our solver scores phrases too. It weighs each unsolved word equally rather than letting the longest word decide every guess, which is closer to how people actually play: they attack the short, nearly finished words first. Across the 800-plus phrases on our lists the median score is 3 misses, against an average of 7.5 for three-letter words, which is a fair picture of how forgiving phrases are compared with short single words.
Writing your own phrases
Good phrases for a class are short (two to five words), contain at least one long word to anchor the guessing, and mean something the group knows: a line from a class read-aloud, a science fact, a school rule. Send a phrase to someone with the two-player link, or put a set of them into the hangman maker.