Nature hangman
82 nature and landscapes words, 6 wrong guesses, and a difficulty rating shown at the end of every round.
Chalking the board…
Playing this list
Nature words are vowel-rich, which makes most of them easier than they look. Archipelago is eleven letters and five of them are vowels, so the board fills quickly once a guesser opens with the obvious ones.
The exceptions are the geological terms. Quartz, sediment and stalagmite carry either a rare letter or an unusual cluster, and they are where a round ends.
This category has the most overlap with science, so if you are running several rounds, alternate them rather than playing them back to back. Guessers start to notice the shared vocabulary and it makes both lists easier.
The full list, with every clue and score, is on the nature 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 82 words, this list sits almost exactly on the site average. The eight letters most people open with — E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R — uncover about 63% of a typical nature and landscapes word, and the single most productive opening letter here is A, which appears 61 times. The least useful of the eight is T at 38 appearances, so spending an early guess on it in this category is usually wasted.
Every word here contains at least one of those eight letters, which is why this category rarely produces a round that collapses in the first three guesses.
Rare letters do turn up: W, V, Z, K and others 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.
- swamp · 8.6 · 5 letters · 40% common cover
- blizzard · 7.7 · 8 letters · 38% common cover
- valley · 7.7 · 6 letters · 33% common cover
- prairie · -1.0 · 7 letters · 86% common cover
- monsoon · -0.3 · 7 letters · 86% common cover
- rainforest · 0.5 · 10 letters · 90% common cover
Questions
How do you play nature 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 6 wrong guesses. The clue button is there if you want it and costs nothing.
How many words are in this game?
82, drawn from the nature list. 38 rate easy, 35 medium and 9 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.