How to play Hangman

By Ari Hlynsson · 1 player · Updated 10 September 2026

Find every letter in the hidden word before six wrong guesses run the tide in. The category is shown from the start, and a letter you have already tried never costs you anything.

The rules, step by step

1. 1

   The word appears as a row of blanks, with its category written above them — that is your only clue and it is given before you guess.

2. 2

   Tap a letter, or type it. If the word contains that letter it appears in every place it belongs, so one guess can fill three blanks.

3. 3

   If the word does not contain it, the letter turns grey and a piece of the sandcastle goes. The tide comes up a little further every time.

4. 4

   Six wrong letters and the word is lost, and the board tells you what the word was.

5. 5

   Fill every blank and the word is yours, however many wrong guesses you spent on the way.

6. 6

   Winning adds one to your streak; losing sets it back to zero. Your longest streak is kept beside it.

Tips that change how you play

• Start with the vowels, but not all of them. E, A and O buy you the most, and a word that has none of the three is rare enough to be worth knowing about early.
• Read the category before your first guess, not after your third. Animals and Food and drink use very different letters, and the category is the only free information in the game.
• Once a blank pattern has a shape, guess the letter that fits the shape rather than the commonest letter left. A five-letter word ending in a double letter is a much smaller list than the alphabet.
• Count the blanks before you guess anything at all. A four-letter word and a nine-letter word in the same category want completely different opening letters, and the length is the one piece of information you are given for nothing besides the category.

A worked round

The category is Around the house and the word is six blanks long. Start with E, the commonest letter in English: it comes back in the second place and the last, giving _ E _ _ _ E. Now A, which is not there — the flag goes, and you have five wrong letters left. Try T: it fills the third and the fourth at once, _ E T T _ E, and the shape has quietly done most of the work. Six letters, an E second, a double T in the middle, an E last, and something you would find in a house. There are not many words like that in English at all: kettle, settle, nettle. Only one of them is in the category. Guess L to confirm the fifth place, then K, and the word is yours for the price of one flag. That is the whole method in five guesses, one of them wrong — spend the early ones on letters that turn up everywhere, and the moment the blanks have a shape, stop guessing letters and start guessing words.

Mistakes that cost beginners the game

Working through the alphabet in order.

A, B, C, D spends four guesses to learn about two useful letters. Letter frequency in English is nothing like alphabetical order: E, T, A, O, I, N and S between them account for most of what a short word is made of, and the last third of the alphabet is where the wrong guesses live.

Guessing a whole word in your head and then testing its rarest letter.

If the guess is right the rare letter tells you almost nothing you did not already believe, and if it is wrong you have paid for the privilege. Test the letter that splits the possibilities most evenly instead — usually a common consonant that half your candidates have and half do not.

Treating the category as decoration.

It is the whole difference between this and a lottery. Six wrong letters cannot search a dictionary, but they can search twenty animals. Narrow to the category first and guess inside it.

Common questions about Hangman