School hangman
82 school words, 6 wrong guesses, and a difficulty rating shown at the end of every round.
Chalking the board…
Playing this list
This is the safest category for a mixed-age group. Almost every word is something in the room, so a guesser who is stuck can look around, and the vocabulary is shared across every age in the class.
Difficulty here comes from length rather than rarity. Encyclopedia and kindergarten are long but contain nothing unusual, so they play as medium rather than hard. The genuinely hard entries are short and unexpected, like quiz.
For a lesson rather than a game, this list pairs well with the subject names. Ask the guesser to say what the word means once they have solved it, and the round does double duty.
The full list, with every clue and score, is on the school 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 62% of a typical school word, and the single most productive opening letter here is R, which appears 69 times. The least useful of the eight is N at 32 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: K, J, X, W 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.
- quiz · 9.5 · 4 letters · 25% common cover
- lunchbox · 9.3 · 8 letters · 25% common cover
- backpack · 8.6 · 8 letters · 25% common cover
- eraser · -2.0 · 6 letters · 100% common cover
- detention · -0.4 · 9 letters · 89% common cover
- presentation · -0.3 · 12 letters · 92% common cover
Questions
How do you play school 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 school list. 42 rate easy, 33 medium and 7 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.