Space hangman
76 space and astronomy words, 6 wrong guesses, and a difficulty rating shown at the end of every round.
Chalking the board…
Playing this list
Space vocabulary is long, Latin or Greek in origin, and unusually regular. Constellation and magnetosphere look intimidating and are generous: almost every letter in them is one a guesser tries early.
The planets are the trap. Mars, Venus and Pluto are short, and Pluto in particular has almost nothing a standard opening will touch. If you want a quick, brutal round, that is where to find it.
This is the best category on the site for a classroom, because a guesser who knows the subject genuinely has an advantage. Knowing what a pulsar is narrows the field once two letters are up, which is not true of the colours or the household list.
The full list, with every clue and score, is on the space 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 76 words, this list runs 0.5 points easier than the site average. The eight letters most people open with — E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R — uncover about 65% of a typical space and astronomy word, and the single most productive opening letter here is E, which appears 66 times. The least useful of the eight is I at 30 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, K, 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.
- vacuum · 8.0 · 6 letters · 17% common cover
- galaxy · 7.7 · 6 letters · 33% common cover
- blackhole · 7.4 · 9 letters · 33% common cover
- orion · -2.4 · 5 letters · 100% common cover
- aurora · -1.7 · 6 letters · 83% common cover
- meteorite · -1.3 · 9 letters · 89% common cover
Questions
How do you play space 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?
76, drawn from the space list. 42 rate easy, 29 medium and 5 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.