Hangman

A–Z guess a letter

How to play Hangman

Hangman is the thirty-second word game: one everyday word, six misses, no timer — exactly the size of a gap between prompts.

  1. A hidden word of six to nine letters appears as chalk blanks on the board.
  2. Guess letters by clicking the chalk keys or just typing on your keyboard.
  3. A correct letter fills in every copy of itself. A wrong letter erases one stroke of the chalk snowman — six wrong guesses and the drawing is gone.
  4. Fill every blank before the snowman disappears to win. Lose, and the word is simply revealed — no penalty, nothing to restart.

Repeat guesses are free, so mash away. The game saves after every letter: close the tab mid-word and it's waiting when you get back.

Tips

  • Play frequency first. E, A, R, I, O, T, N, S cover a lot of English. A couple of vowels plus R, S, T usually cracks the board open.
  • Then play patterns, not frequency. Blanks are information: _ING, _ED, _ER, and _LY endings are everywhere in 6–9 letter words, and a lone blank between two known letters often has only one or two legal fillers.
  • Say the word out loud (in your head). Reading the half-filled pattern as a sound, not a puzzle, is usually what surfaces the answer.
  • Budget your consonants. After the vowels are settled, guess consonants that test positions, not just presence — an S tells you about plurals, an H pairs with C, S, T, and W.
  • Don't fear the miss. Six is a generous budget against common words. A strategic wrong guess that rules out a whole family of words is worth a stroke of snowman.

The daily word

Switch to Daily and you get the same word as every other player today, drawn from the date — solve it in as few misses as you can and copy a spoiler-free result to share. Miss it entirely? The word is revealed gently and tomorrow's is already queued up. Like everything here, it passes the alt-tab test: droppable mid-guess, resumable whenever your build finishes.

Frequently asked questions

What are the rules of Hangman?

One player picks a secret word and draws a blank for each letter; the other guesses letters one at a time. A correct guess fills in every copy of that letter, a wrong one costs a strike and adds to the drawing, and repeated guesses cost nothing. Guess every letter before running out of strikes to win. Here the computer picks the word — an everyday English word of six to nine letters — and you get six misses.

How many wrong guesses do you get in Hangman?

The classic count is six, one for each part of the drawing, and that is what this version uses. Correct guesses and repeats are always free — only a new wrong letter spends one of the six.

What are the best letters to guess first in Hangman?

Start with the most frequent letters in English: E, then A, R, I, O, T, N, S. Vowels first is a fine habit — nearly every word has two or more — then switch to common consonants. Once a few blanks are filled, stop playing frequency and start playing patterns: a word ending in blank-N-G almost certainly ends in ING.

Where do the Hangman words come from?

From a fixed public word list filtered to common English — the several thousand words that show up at least once per million words of real text. No proper nouns, no obscure dictionary filler; if you lose, it will be to a word you know.

Is there a daily Hangman word?

Yes. Daily mode gives every player the same word, chosen from the date, with a new one at local midnight. Solve it and copy a spoiler-free result to share; the word itself never appears in the share text.

Why is there a snowman instead of a hanging man?

Same game, cozier chalk. Each wrong guess erases one stroke of a chalk snowman from the board, and losing just means the drawing is gone — then the word is revealed and tomorrow's puzzle is already waiting. The rules and the six-miss budget are exactly the classic ones.

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