Hangman
NEWWorks on both desktop and mobile. Tap or click to play.
About This Game
Play Hangman free online. Guess the hidden word one letter at a time before the drawing completes. Themed categories, on-screen keyboard. No sign-up.
How to play Hangman
Objective: Reveal every letter of the hidden word by guessing correct letters before six wrong guesses complete the stick figure.
Pick a category first: Animals, Food, Countries, or Tech. The buttons sit at the top, and clicking any of them starts a fresh word from that bank. Each category holds ten uppercase words, from ELEPHANT and CROISSANT to ALGORITHM. The chosen word shows as a row of blank underscores, one per letter. Every word is a single word with no spaces or hyphens, so you only track one continuous string.
Guess letters by clicking the on-screen A-to-Z keyboard or by pressing letter keys on a physical keyboard. A correct letter fills every position where it appears and turns that key green. A wrong letter turns the key red and adds one segment to the drawing. You get six wrong guesses total, in the order head, body, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg. The Wrong X/6 counter shows how close you are.
You win the moment every letter has been guessed: You Got It appears and your win streak, tracked at the top, goes up by one. You lose on the sixth wrong guess, when Out of Guesses shows and the full word is revealed with missed letters in red. A loss resets your streak to zero, so one bad round wipes out a run. Press New Word for another word from the same category.
Tips and strategy
Open with vowels
Start with E, A, and O. Every bank is common vocabulary, and these vowels appear constantly. CHOCOLATE, AVOCADO, and AUSTRALIA all carry several, so two vowel hits frame the word's shape without spending your six-wrong budget.
Use the category
The category is a real clue. In Countries, THAILAND and ICELAND both end in -LAND. In Tech, the letter R appears in eight of the ten words, so it is a strong early guess there. With only ten fixed words per bank, one theme plus a couple of letters often makes the answer certain.
Count the blanks
Note the length first. Only one Food word runs ten letters (STRAWBERRY), and CANADA is the sole six-letter Country in its bank. Since each bank has ten fixed words, an unusual length plus one revealed letter often identifies the answer outright.
Chase double letters
A correct guess fills every matching position at once, so hunt repeats. SPAGHETTI has two Ts, BROCCOLI two Cs and two Os. Landing a repeated letter uncovers several blanks from a single guess and never costs a wrong.
The history of Hangman
Hangman is a paper-and-pencil word game that spread through English-speaking schoolyards in the Victorian era, with printed references appearing in the late nineteenth century. The core idea has stayed stable: one player thinks of a word, the other guesses letters, and each miss adds a stroke to a figure on a gallows. The format later inspired the letter-guessing of Wheel of Fortune. This version keeps the classic six misses while swapping the pencil sketch for an SVG figure and grouping words into themed banks.
Frequently asked questions
How many wrong guesses can I make?
Six. Each wrong letter draws one part in this order: head, body, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg. The sixth wrong guess ends the round as a loss. The Wrong X/6 counter at the top tracks how many you have used so you can pace yourself.
How does the win streak work?
Every solved word adds one to your streak, shown at the top. A single loss resets it to zero. The streak is stored in your browser's local storage, so it survives closing and reopening the page. Nothing is uploaded; the count lives only on your own device.
Can I choose the category?
Yes. Four buttons let you switch between Animals, Food, Countries, and Tech. Clicking a category both selects it and starts a fresh word from that bank. Each holds ten words. There is no mixed or random category that pulls from all four at once.
Is there a timer or difficulty setting?
No. There is no clock, no countdown, and no easy or hard mode. Every round gives you the same six wrong guesses regardless of category. Difficulty comes only from how obscure the drawn word feels, since each category mixes short common words with longer ones.