Hangman

Guess the word before the drawing is finished

Hangman

How you are doing

Level

Always show the clueWhat the word means is there from the start, rather than waiting until you ask.

Mode

How to play

Guess the word one letter at a time. Every letter you get right is written into the blanks; every one you get wrong adds a piece to the drawing.
Six wrong letters and the drawing is finished — head, body, two arms and two legs — and the word is lost. The dots beside the gallows count what you have left.
Type on your keyboard, or tap the letters below the word. A letter can only be tried once.
Clue tells you what the word means. It costs you nothing but bragging rights: a word guessed with no clue and no wrong letters is a clean one, and those are counted separately.
Keys: A–Z guess, C clue, N a new word, M sound, F full screen.
Set a friend a word sends a link. You each think of a word for the other, and once both have been sent you both start guessing at the same time — first one home wins, and whoever is still going can watch the other's drawing fill in.

Getting them more often

Vowels first. Almost every word has one, and in English E is far and away the commonest letter, then A, I, O and U. Two or three vowels usually tell you the shape of the word.
Then the common consonants — R, S, T, L, N — which is exactly the handful the wheel gives away on television, and for the same reason.
Look at what you already have. A letter on its own at the end is almost always S or Y; a double letter is most often LL, SS, EE or OO; and a Q is always followed by U.
Count the blanks. Short words are the dangerous ones — there is less to go on and each wrong guess costs proportionally more, which is why the hard level here is full of them.

About the words

The words come from a book of about three and a half thousand everyday words, each with a short clue written for it — the same book the crossword here is built from.
The level is worked out from the letters themselves, not the length: a word is hard when its letters are rare ones and there are few different ones to find. That is why JAZZ and QUIZ sit at the hard end and ASTONISHED, long as it is, sits at the easy one.
Everything is picked on your own device. Nothing is fetched, and the word your friend sets goes straight to you and nowhere else.