Hangman words with no vowels
Every guesser opens with vowels. These words contain none of A, E, I, O or U, so that opening produces nothing at all and four or five guesses are gone before the board has moved.
Why they work
A standard opening is A, E, then I, O and U in some order. Against an ordinary word two of those land and the shape of the answer appears. Against a vowel-free word none of them land, and the guesser has spent most of their allowance learning only what the word is not.
Almost all of these lean on Y. It carries the vowel sound without being one of the five letters anybody tries early, which is the whole trick. RHYTHM is the famous one and it is far from alone.
90 words with no A, E, I, O or U
| Word | Letters | Score |
|---|---|---|
| byp | 3 | 13.0 |
| bys | 3 | 9.7 |
| cly | 3 | 13.0 |
| cry | 3 | 9.7 |
| cyc | 3 | 12.0 |
| cyl | 3 | 13.0 |
| cyp | 3 | 13.0 |
| dry | 3 | 9.7 |
| dyn | 3 | 9.7 |
| dys | 3 | 9.7 |
| fcy | 3 | 13.0 |
| fly | 3 | 13.0 |
| fry | 3 | 9.7 |
| gry | 3 | 9.7 |
| gym | 3 | 13.0 |
| gyn | 3 | 9.7 |
| gyp | 3 | 13.0 |
| hny | 3 | 9.7 |
| hvy | 3 | 15.0 |
| hwy | 3 | 15.0 |
| hyd | 3 | 13.0 |
| hyp | 3 | 13.0 |
| kyd | 3 | 15.0 |
| kyl | 3 | 15.0 |
| lyc | 3 | 13.0 |
| lym | 3 | 13.0 |
| lyn | 3 | 9.7 |
| lys | 3 | 9.7 |
| myc | 3 | 13.0 |
| myg | 3 | 13.0 |
| mym | 3 | 12.0 |
| ply | 3 | 13.0 |
| pry | 3 | 9.7 |
| pty | 3 | 9.7 |
| pyr | 3 | 9.7 |
| pyx | 3 | 15.0 |
| qty | 3 | 11.7 |
| byrls | 5 | 9.0 |
| glycyls | 7 | 10.7 |
| symphysy | 8 | 9.4 |
| bbl | 3 | 12.0 |
| bbs | 3 | 8.7 |
| bcd | 3 | 13.0 |
| bcf | 3 | 13.0 |
| bch | 3 | 13.0 |
| bdl | 3 | 13.0 |
| bds | 3 | 9.7 |
| bhd | 3 | 13.0 |
| bhp | 3 | 13.0 |
| bkg | 3 | 15.0 |
| bks | 3 | 11.7 |
| bkt | 3 | 11.7 |
| bld | 3 | 13.0 |
| blk | 3 | 15.0 |
| bls | 3 | 9.7 |
| bnf | 3 | 9.7 |
| bps | 3 | 9.7 |
| bpt | 3 | 9.7 |
| brl | 3 | 9.7 |
| brr | 3 | 5.3 |
| bsf | 3 | 9.7 |
| bsh | 3 | 9.7 |
| btl | 3 | 9.7 |
| bvt | 3 | 11.7 |
| bxs | 3 | 11.7 |
| ccm | 3 | 12.0 |
| ccw | 3 | 15.0 |
| cdf | 3 | 13.0 |
| cdg | 3 | 13.0 |
| cdr | 3 | 9.7 |
| cfd | 3 | 13.0 |
| cfh | 3 | 13.0 |
| cfm | 3 | 13.0 |
| cfs | 3 | 9.7 |
| cgm | 3 | 13.0 |
| cgs | 3 | 9.7 |
| chg | 3 | 13.0 |
| chm | 3 | 13.0 |
| chn | 3 | 9.7 |
| chs | 3 | 9.7 |
| ckw | 3 | 17.0 |
| clk | 3 | 15.0 |
| clr | 3 | 9.7 |
| cmd | 3 | 13.0 |
| cml | 3 | 13.0 |
| cpd | 3 | 13.0 |
| cpl | 3 | 13.0 |
| cpm | 3 | 13.0 |
| cps | 3 | 9.7 |
| cpt | 3 | 9.7 |
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The nastier list
Words containing none of E T A O I N S R, the eight letters people actually guess first. Losing the vowels is bad; losing the common consonants too is what ends a game before it starts.
| Word | Letters | Score |
|---|---|---|
| bkcy | 4 | 14.5 |
| bkgd | 4 | 14.5 |
| bldg | 4 | 13.0 |
| blub | 4 | 10.3 |
| blup | 4 | 11.0 |
| blvd | 4 | 14.5 |
| buck | 4 | 12.5 |
| buff | 4 | 10.3 |
| buhl | 4 | 11.0 |
| bukh | 4 | 12.5 |
| bulb | 4 | 10.3 |
| bulk | 4 | 12.5 |
| bull | 4 | 10.3 |
| bumf | 4 | 11.0 |
| bump | 4 | 11.0 |
| buzz | 4 | 12.3 |
| cckw | 4 | 16.3 |
| chub | 4 | 11.0 |
| chug | 4 | 11.0 |
| chum | 4 | 11.0 |
| club | 4 | 11.0 |
| clum | 4 | 11.0 |
| cmdg | 4 | 13.0 |
| cuck | 4 | 12.3 |
| cuff | 4 | 10.3 |
| cull | 4 | 10.3 |
| culm | 4 | 11.0 |
| culp | 4 | 11.0 |
| cump | 4 | 11.0 |
| cuvy | 4 | 12.5 |
| cycl | 4 | 12.3 |
| cyul | 4 | 11.0 |
| dlvy | 4 | 14.5 |
| dubb | 4 | 10.3 |
| duck | 4 | 12.5 |
| duff | 4 | 10.3 |
| dulc | 4 | 11.0 |
| dull | 4 | 10.3 |
| duly | 4 | 11.0 |
| dumb | 4 | 11.0 |
| dump | 4 | 11.0 |
| fdub | 4 | 11.0 |
| flub | 4 | 11.0 |
| flux | 4 | 12.5 |
| fuck | 4 | 12.5 |
| fuff | 4 | 9.5 |
| fugu | 4 | 8.3 |
| fulk | 4 | 12.5 |
| full | 4 | 10.3 |
| fumy | 4 | 11.0 |
| fuzz | 4 | 12.3 |
| glub | 4 | 11.0 |
| glug | 4 | 10.3 |
| glum | 4 | 11.0 |
| glyc | 4 | 13.0 |
| gpcd | 4 | 13.0 |
| guck | 4 | 12.5 |
| guff | 4 | 10.3 |
| gugu | 4 | 7.5 |
| guld | 4 | 11.0 |
A warning about using them
These are the words that win, and a round nobody can get into is not much of a round. If you are playing with a group, one of these as a finale works. Six of them in a row is just a person drawing.
For a fair game with real difficulty, the scored hard list is the better source, and the hardest words on the site shows what the top of that looks like with the working attached.
Questions
What hangman words have no vowels?
Words like BYP, BYS, CLY, CRY, CYC. Most of them lean on Y, which acts as the vowel sound without being one of the five letters a guesser opens with. There are 90 listed here.
Are vowel-free words the hardest in hangman?
They are hard, and they are not the hardest. Losing the vowels costs a guesser their opening, but several vowel-free words still contain common consonants like S, T or R. The genuinely brutal set is the second list on this page: words containing none of E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R.
Is Y a vowel in hangman?
For the purposes of guessing, no. A guesser works through A, E, I, O and U first and reaches Y much later, which is precisely why Y-heavy words survive an opening that would demolish an ordinary word.
Where do these words come from?
A standard English dictionary of 344,076 words, filtered by the rule stated above rather than hand-picked. Proper nouns are excluded, so everything here is an ordinary word.