Play hangman online
1792 words across 24 categories. Type on your keyboard or tap the letters, and each round ends with the word's difficulty rating and what it means.
Chalking the board…
Play one category
Creatures from every continent and every ocean.
85 words · 43/31/11 e/m/h
Dishes, ingredients and the things you cook them with.
83 words · 46/25/12 e/m/h
Nations from every continent, easy ones and awkward ones.
85 words · 48/29/8 e/m/h
Games, events, equipment and the words around them.
80 words · 27/37/16 e/m/h
Physics, chemistry, biology and everything above the atmosphere.
82 words · 48/30/4 e/m/h
Classroom objects, subjects and the rhythm of the school day.
82 words · 42/33/7 e/m/h
Trades, professions and what each one actually does.
84 words · 59/20/5 e/m/h
Landscape, weather, plants and the words for wild places.
82 words · 38/35/9 e/m/h
Hardware, software and the vocabulary that came with them.
82 words · 42/35/5 e/m/h
Airports, luggage, landmarks and everything in between.
83 words · 39/40/4 e/m/h
Instruments, notation, genres and how a piece is put together.
83 words · 46/25/12 e/m/h
How films are made, shot, cut and sold.
85 words · 49/29/7 e/m/h
Short, familiar words for players who are still learning to spell.
95 words · 41/37/17 e/m/h
Words that are enjoyable to say and awkward to guess.
86 words · 15/31/40 e/m/h
Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter and the rest of the calendar.
84 words · 39/39/6 e/m/h
Trees, stockings, carols and the whole of December.
81 words · 28/39/14 e/m/h
Pumpkins, costumes and everything that goes bump.
83 words · 26/35/22 e/m/h
All fifty, from Alabama to Wyoming.
50 words · 37/11/2 e/m/h
Anatomy from the skull to the sole.
74 words · 33/24/17 e/m/h
Planets, missions and everything past the atmosphere.
76 words · 42/29/5 e/m/h
Everything in the house, room by room.
83 words · 29/32/22 e/m/h
Every shade with a proper name, from crimson to taupe.
84 words · 40/37/7 e/m/h
Everything that moves people, on land, water or air.
85 words · 42/32/11 e/m/h
Multi-word idioms, where the gaps between words do half the work.
86 words · 82/4/0 e/m/h
Common questions
How do you play hangman?
One player picks a word and draws a blank for each letter. The other guesses letters. A correct letter fills every position it occupies; a wrong one adds a part to the figure. Six wrong guesses and the game is over.
How many wrong guesses are allowed?
Six here, which gives a head, a body, two arms and two legs. Some people play with ten by adding the gallows itself; the kids category on this site uses ten for the same reason.
What is the best first letter to guess in hangman?
E, then A, then R. Those three appear in more English words than any others, and on this site the difficulty score is built partly on how much of a word the eight most common letters cover.
Does the game keep my score?
It keeps a streak, in your own browser. There is no account and no leaderboard, because nothing is sent to a server.