Play hangman online
Guess the word letter by letter before the hangman drawing is complete. Play solo against the word list or type a secret word for your friends to guess.
How it is calculated
How to play hangman
Hangman is a word-guessing game for one or more players. At the start you only see a row of blanks, one for each letter of the hidden word. Guess one letter at a time: if it is in the word, it appears in every matching spot. If it is not, another part of the hangman is drawn. Fill in the whole word before the drawing is finished and you win.
- Pick a level: “Easy” uses the most common words, “Hard” less frequent ones.
- Pick the number of wrong guesses: 6 (only the figure is drawn), 8 or 10 (the gallows is drawn piece by piece as well).
- Guess: tap letters on the on-screen keyboard or type them on your keyboard.
Two players with your own word
Open “Two players: enter your own word”, let one person type a secret word or short phrase (for example “ice cream”) and pass the device on. Spaces and hyphens are shown right away. Your own words are never saved and do not count towards the stats.
Where do the words come from?
The roughly 3,000 words come from SCOWL, the open word list behind many spell checkers. Only words with 4 to 10 letters that are common in real texts (frequency data from wordfreq) were kept, without plural and verb forms when the base word is in the list. Proper names, slurs and vulgar or offensive words were filtered out and the list was spot-checked by hand. Words are drawn with the browser’s cryptographic random generator, and recently played words do not come back straight away.
Tips
- Start with the most common letters in English: E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R.
- Look for common endings such as -ING, -TION, -ED or -LY.
- Short words are often harder than long ones – they give away less.
More games: tic tac toe against the computer, the Wordle solver or the score keeper for game night.
Frequently asked questions
How many wrong guesses do you get in hangman?
There is no single rule. Here you choose 6, 8 or 10: with 6 the gallows is already standing and only the figure is drawn; with 10 the gallows is drawn piece by piece too.
How do you play hangman with two players?
Open “Two players: enter your own word”. One person types the word hidden, the other guesses. The word stays hidden until it is solved or the drawing is complete.
What letters should I guess first?
The most common letters in English are E, T, A, O, I, N, S and R. Starting with them usually reveals several spots quickly.
Are there proper names or rude words?
No. The list only contains common words; proper names, slurs and offensive words were filtered out. If you still come across an unsuitable word, please let us know.
Can I play with my keyboard?
Yes. Just type the letters. When the game is over, Enter starts a new word.
Do accented letters count?
Accents count as the base letter, so E also reveals É in a word like café. Your own words may contain accented letters.
Is anything saved?
Only your settings and stats (wins, losses, streak) in your browser’s localStorage. Your own words are never saved and nothing is sent to a server.
Sources and legal basis
- Wikipedia: Hangman (game)
- Word list: SCOWLv2 (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) release 2026.02.25 – © Kevin Atkinson, SCOWL licence; common words with 4–10 letters only
- Frequency filter: wordfreq 3.1.1 (Robyn Speer), data CC BY-SA 4.0
- Origin, filters and licence of the hangman word list (GPL-3.0 or later, on this website)
- MDN: Crypto.getRandomValues()
As of:
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