How to play two-player hangman
- Player one types a secret word or phrase while player two looks away. The letters are hidden as dots; press Show to check the spelling.
- Add a hint if you like, such as “a country” or “something in the kitchen”, and choose how many wrong guesses to allow.
- Press Start and hand over. Player two guesses one letter at a time, on screen or by typing.
- When the round ends, press Next word and swap roles.
Words can have spaces, hyphens and apostrophes, so phrases, names and film titles work too. Only the letters A to Z are guessed; the rest is shown from the start. Accented letters keep their accents on screen: guessing E also fills in the É of CAFÉ.
Play with a friend online
Press Copy link for a friend instead of Start, and send the link in a message. When your friend opens it, the game starts with your word, your hint and your number of guesses. Afterwards they can send a word back the same way.
The word is scrambled in the link, so it does not show at a glance in a chat preview. It is not real encryption: someone determined could work it out, so do not use it for anything secret. Nothing is sent to us or stored anywhere; the word travels only inside the link.
How many wrong guesses?
- 6: the classic game, one guess for each of head, body, two arms and two legs.
- 8: two more, for the last pieces of the gallows. Good for longer phrases or younger players.
- 10: the upright, beam, brace and rope go up one at a time before the figure, as many people play on paper.
Choosing a word that is hard to guess
Pick a short word with uncommon letters. It feels backwards, but long words are easy: every guess is likely to hit one of their many letters. In our test of 651 words, three-letter words needed about five times as many wrong guesses as words of nine letters or more. Words like jazz, fox and quiz are hard; xylophone is not. The hangman words page has the full list, and a picker that can hand you a word.
Ideas for groups and classrooms
- Spelling practice: the teacher types a word from this week’s list and the class guesses together on a shared screen.
- Teams: split into two teams that take turns choosing words for each other, and keep score of rounds won.
- Theme nights: everyone chooses words from one topic, like films or places you have been, and says it in the hint.
To play against the computer instead, go back to hangman.