Hangman is the classic word guessing game: a hidden word is shown as blanks, and you guess it one letter at a time. Every wrong letter adds a stroke to the drawing, so the aim is to find the word before the picture is finished.
The rules
The word is shown as one blank per letter.
Pick a letter. If it’s in the word, it fills in every blank where it appears.
If it isn’t, that’s a miss, and another stroke is added to the drawing.
Fill in the whole word to win. Run out of misses and the word is revealed.
Easy, Normal and Hard
Easy: words of 6 or 7 letters and 10 misses, so the gallows itself gets drawn too.
Normal: words of 5 to 7 letters and 8 misses.
Hard: words of 4 or 5 letters and only 6 misses. Short words are harder, because each letter you find tells you less.
Start with the common letters
E is the most common letter in English, followed by A, R, I, O, T, N and S. Open with a vowel or two (E and A are the safest), then try R, T, N and S. Once a word has a couple of vowels in place, the rest of the shape usually starts to show.
Read the pattern
Look at where the found letters sit. _ _ I N G strongly suggests a word ending in -ING; _ _ T T E R suggests BETTER, LETTER or BUTTER.
Double letters are common in the middle of words: LL, SS, EE, OO, TT.
If there’s no vowel showing yet in a short word, try Y: it often plays the part of one, as in GYM or MYTH.
Before guessing a rare letter like J, Q, X or Z, make sure a word with it actually fits the gaps.
Hints and your record
Stuck? Hint fills in the letter that appears most often in what’s left of the word, for the cost of one miss. It isn’t offered on your last miss. Your record for each mode is the fewest misses you’ve needed to find a word.