Science hangman
82 science words, 6 wrong guesses, and a difficulty rating shown at the end of every round.
Chalking the board…
Playing this list
Science words are long, Latin or Greek in origin, and remarkably regular. Photosynthesis is fifteen letters and one of the easier words on this site, because the letters in it are the ones everybody guesses first.
What makes this category hard is the element names. Magnesium, potassium and uranium share so much structure that a guesser can get most of the letters and still not know which one they are looking at, which is a different and more frustrating kind of difficulty than a rare letter.
This is the best category for a classroom, because a guesser who knows the subject genuinely has an advantage. That is not true of animals or food, where knowing the thing tells you nothing about the spelling.
The full list, with every clue and score, is on the science 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 runs 0.6 points easier than the site average. The eight letters most people open with — E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R — uncover about 64% of a typical science word, and the single most productive opening letter here is E, which appears 71 times. The least useful of the eight is S at 39 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: V, Q, X, 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.
- chlorophyll · 7.7 · 11 letters · 27% common cover
- galaxy · 7.7 · 6 letters · 33% common cover
- muscle · 7.0 · 6 letters · 33% common cover
- erosion · -2.0 · 7 letters · 100% common cover
- meteorite · -1.3 · 9 letters · 89% common cover
- radiation · -1.0 · 9 letters · 89% common cover
Questions
How do you play science 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 science list. 48 rate easy, 30 medium and 4 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.