How to Play Hangman
Hangman is the classic pen-and-paper word game: one player picks a secret word, the other guesses it a letter at a time before the drawing is finished. It's quick, great for vocabulary, and perfect for passing a phone between two players.
By the Multiplayer Games team · Updated · Rules checked against the sources below
Objective
As the guesser, reveal the whole word before you run out of wrong guesses. As the word-setter, choose a word your opponent can't crack.
Setup
One player secretly types a word. It's shown as a row of blanks — one per letter — and the drawing starts empty.
Hangman rules, step by step
- Set the word. The setter enters a secret word while the guesser looks away.
- Guess a letter. The guesser picks one letter at a time from the keyboard.
- Right letters fill in. Every place the letter appears in the word is revealed at once.
- Wrong letters draw. Each miss adds another piece to the drawing, and that letter is crossed off.
- Win or lose. Fill every blank to win. If the drawing is completed first, the setter wins and the word is revealed.
Hangman variants, and the rules we use
Hangman is played slightly differently from place to place. These are the variants you're most likely to meet:
- Different drawings. Some players draw more parts (hands, feet, a face), allowing 8–10 misses; others draw fewer for a harder game.
- Category clues. The setter announces a category — films, animals, cities — to make long words fairer.
- Phrases. Whole phrases with spaces shown, like Wheel of Fortune.
How Hangman works in Multiplayer Games:
- 6 wrong guesses and the guesser loses.
- Online, one player types the word and the other guesses; roles swap each round.
- Against the computer, it picks a word from a built-in list.
- Repeated letters are revealed everywhere they appear in one go.
Hangman strategy for beginners
- Open with the most common letters: E, A, R, I, O, T, N and S.
- Look at word length and the letters already shown — common endings like -ING, -ED and -TION narrow things fast.
- Once a vowel is placed, try the consonants that usually sit next to it.
- As the setter, short words with rare letters (like JAZZ or LYNX) are harder than long ones.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Guessing rare letters like Q, X or Z early, before the word has any shape.
- Ignoring patterns: a double letter or an apostrophe can give the word away.
- As the setter, choosing a long word full of common letters — it fills in almost by itself.
Hangman terms explained
- Setter
- The player who chooses the secret word.
- Guesser
- The player trying to uncover it.
- Miss
- A guessed letter that isn't in the word.
A short history of Hangman
Nobody knows exactly where Hangman began, but a version called 'Birds, Beasts and Fishes' appears in Alice Bertha Gomme's 1894 collection Traditional Games, where players guessed the letters of an animal's name. The gallows drawing came later, and by the 20th century it was a staple of classrooms and the back pages of notebooks.
It has stayed popular because it teaches spelling and letter frequency while still feeling like a contest — and the TV show Wheel of Fortune is essentially Hangman with a prize wheel.
