Hangman
The playground classic: find the word from its blanks and the letters you have already uncovered. Six wrong letters finish the round, so the order you guess in matters more than it looks. A hint can reveal a clue when you need a hand.
How it works
- Tap a letter to reveal every place it appears in the word.
- If a clue is available, the first hint reveals it; later hints reveal a letter.
- A letter that isn't in the word adds a piece to the figure. Six pieces ends the round.
- Undo uses a hint to take back your last guess, and any piece it added.
Good if you want…
- A puzzle with rules everyone already knows
- Two minutes rather than twenty
- Setting a word for someone you know
How to solve Hangman
Open with vowels, carefully
Almost every English word has a vowel, so one early vowel guess is nearly free. E is the most common letter in English, with A, O and I close behind. Two vowels usually show you enough of the word's shape; guessing all five in a row spends pieces on letters that may not be there.
Then the common consonants
After vowels, the most useful consonants are the frequent ones: T, N, S, R and L. They appear in so many words that a miss is still informative — a longish word with no S, T or R in it is unusual, and knowing that narrows things a lot.
Read the shape of the word
The pattern of blanks and found letters is the only clue there is, so use it. A long word whose third letter from the end is an I may well end in -ING. A U straight after a blank is very likely a Q in front of it. Doubles show up as the same letter twice in a row, and common endings — -ED, -ER, -LY, -TION — are worth testing once the length suggests them.
Guess words, not letters, near the end
With half the word showing, stop thinking about letter frequency and think about which words fit. _ R _ N _ E could be ORANGE or BRONZE or FRINGE; guess the letter that separates them rather than the one that is most common.
Common mistakes
- Guessing rare letters early. A J or a Z is either a triumph or a wasted piece, and it is rarely a triumph.
- Guessing all the vowels. Y also works as a vowel, and many short words have only one.
- Forgetting that a wrong letter is information. If there is no E, rule out every word with an E.
Where Hangman comes from
Hangman's origins are hazy. A version called Birds, Beasts and Fishes is recorded among traditional children's games in Victorian Britain, and the gallows drawing followed later.
Hangman questions
How many wrong guesses do I get?
Six. Each wrong letter adds a piece to the figure, and the sixth ends the round.
Is there a clue?
No — only the blanks and the letters you have found. It is one of the puzzles you can write yourself, so you can set a word for someone you know.
Hangman in Winters Puzzles
Hangman is one of 40 puzzles in Winters Puzzles, so it sits alongside Word Search, Silhouette, Word Dominoes and everything else in the app rather than being a download of its own. It counts towards your stats and streak like any other puzzle. It also has a published board in Pip’s dailies, with earlier dates available in the archive.
Hangman is also one of the 5 puzzles you can write yourself. Put in your own words or questions, try it, then send a link so someone else can play exactly what you made — see create and share.
Play Hangman.
Free on iPhone and iPad, with 39 other puzzles alongside it. Or play it in your browser — no download, nothing to sign up for.
