Hangman

Overview

One player thinks of a word; the other guesses it a letter at a time before the drawing is finished.

No governing body publishes rules for this game. This page describes the most common form. House rules vary, so agree them before you start.

Setup

The chooser picks a word and draws a dash for each letter. Agree the category first — any word, place names, films — and whether proper nouns are allowed.

Play

1. The guesser names a letter.
2. If it appears in the word, the chooser writes it above every dash where it occurs.
3. If it does not, the chooser adds one part to the drawing and records the letter in a list of misses.

The drawing

The traditional figure gives six wrong guesses:

1. Head
2. Body
3. Left arm
4. Right arm
5. Left leg
6. Right leg

Tables often extend this with the gallows itself — base, post, beam, rope — for a gentler ten-guess game. Agree which before you start.

Winning

The guesser wins by completing the word before the figure is finished. The chooser wins if the drawing completes first.

Strategy note

E, T, A, O, I and N are among the most common letters in English text, though the exact order depends on what you count. Opening with vowels reveals structure fastest, but consonants like t, n and s carry more positional information once you have a vowel or two.

Word length matters. Three-letter words are hard to corner; long words fall apart quickly once you have a common suffix like -ing or -tion.

Choosing a hard word

Short words with uncommon letters beat long ones. Classic traps: jazz, fuzzy, lymph, crypt, rhythm — few vowels, low-frequency consonants, no obvious pattern.