Kids hangman
95 young players words, 10 wrong guesses, and a difficulty rating shown at the end of every round.
Chalking the board…
Playing this list
Every word here is short, common and something a young child has already met. The list is built so that a guesser opening with A, E and S will almost always get a letter on the board in the first two tries, which is what keeps a young player in the game.
Give more guesses, not easier words. Ten wrong guesses instead of six changes a child's experience far more than swapping one word for another, and it keeps the round long enough to be worth playing.
The best use of this list is spelling practice disguised as a game. Ask the child to say the word aloud and then write it out once they have solved it, and the round teaches twice.
The full list, with every clue and score, is on the kids word list. If you want to set a word for somebody else instead, the create page turns any word into a shareable game.
What this list does to a guesser
Measured across all 95 words, this list runs 0.3 points harder than the site average. The eight letters most people open with — E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R — uncover about 62% of a typical young players word, and the single most productive opening letter here is E, which appears 56 times. The least useful of the eight is N at 25 appearances, so spending an early guess on it in this category is usually wasted.
2 words in this list contain none of those eight letters at all — duck, puppy. Those are the rounds that end early, because a standard opening draws the whole figure before a single letter lands.
Rare letters do turn up: K, W, Z, V appear across the list, and a word carrying one is usually the one that beats you. How the rating weighs that is set out on how difficulty is scored.
- duck · 12.5 · 4 letters · 0% common cover
- puppy · 10.2 · 5 letters · 0% common cover
- milk · 10.0 · 4 letters · 25% common cover
- tree · -1.8 · 4 letters · 100% common cover
- rain · -1.0 · 4 letters · 100% common cover
- banana · -0.8 · 6 letters · 83% common cover
Questions
How do you play kids hangman?
Guess a letter. If it appears in the word it fills in every position it occupies; if not, another part of the figure is drawn. You get 10 wrong guesses. The clue button is there if you want it and costs nothing.
How many words are in this game?
95, drawn from the kids list. 41 rate easy, 37 medium and 17 hard, and the rating for each word is shown once the round ends.
Is it free, and do I need an account?
It is free and there is no account. The game runs in your browser and your streak is stored on your own device, so nothing is sent to a server.