Hangman

Hangman is the classic letter-by-letter word-guessing game, a paper-and-pencil playground staple since at least the Victorian era. The host picks a secret word, you guess one letter at a time, and every wrong guess adds another part to the stickman on the gallows. Six wrong guesses and the figure is fully drawn · you lose. Guess every letter first and you save the figure · you win.

Three difficulty tiers. Easy ships 4-letter common nouns · short enough that even careless guessing usually works. Medium ships standard 5-letter words · the classic Hangman shape that has been the schoolroom default for generations. Hard ramps to rare 6+ letter vocabulary where every guess matters and lazy openers cost the round. All three pools come from the curated Wordle dictionary that already ships with PlayMemorize, so adding a word to one game makes it available in both.

Letter-frequency strategy. The optimal opening for any English Hangman is the most frequent letters: E, T, A, O, I, N (the "ETAOIN" mnemonic). Vowels first usually pays · roughly 38% of English letters are vowels, and most words contain at least one. Save the rare letters (J, Q, X, Z) for late in the round when you've already narrowed the candidates, and never guess a letter you've already used (the game refuses but it still wastes attention).

Deterministic, shareable. Every round is keyed by a seed in the URL · copy the link and share the same secret word with a friend. Useful for "we both got it in N guesses, who used fewer?" comparisons. Hangman is also worksheet-supported · the master generator prints the partially-revealed word, the strike count, and four letter options for students to circle.

Part of the PlayMemorize family of brain-training games. Runs entirely in your browser, works offline as a Progressive Web App.