How to play
- Guess a letter. Tap it on the keyboard, or just type it.
- Right letters fill in everywhere they appear. Guess E in SEVENTEEN and you get all four at once.
- Wrong letters pop a balloon. This round gives you 8 — the younger grades get more, because a five year old cannot afford an adult’s margin. When they are gone the word is revealed and you move on.
- Stuck? Take a clue. The first clue shows the word’s meaning; the second gives you a letter. Each one costs points.
- Five words to a round. Finish them and move to the next.
Why there is no gallows
Hangman is a genuinely good word game wearing a picture nobody would choose today. The rules — deduce a word from the letters it does and does not contain — are worth keeping and teach something real. The drawing is not. A six year old on a classroom whiteboard does not need a figure being hanged, and a teacher should not have to explain it.
So the lives are six balloons and a wrong guess pops one. It carries exactly the same information at a glance — how many mistakes are left, and how close to losing you are — and it costs the game nothing.
How the scoring works
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Guessing a word | Twice its length — an eight-letter word is 16 |
| A wrong letter | −2 |
| A clue | −3 |
Working through the alphabet from A will get you the word and almost none of the points, which is the whole idea: the game rewards thinking about which letters are likely, not brute force.
This round
Round 1 is Kindergarten Words — 5 words, the longest 3 letters, 4 of them with a definition you can reveal as a clue. Round numbers are stable, so send someone round 1 and they get these exact words. No answers here.
Four ways to guess better
- Start with vowels. Almost every word has one, and their positions tell you most of the shape.
- Then the common consonants. R, S, T, L and N appear in more English words than the rest of the alphabet put together.
- Read the endings. A word ending in two blanks after a vowel is often -ED, -ER or -LY. That is a guess worth making.
- Count the letters first. A four-letter word and an eleven-letter word are different games. The long one usually has more repeats, which makes it easier, not harder.
For teachers and parents
Every round is five words from a SpellingJoy grade list, and most carry their definition, so a child guessing the word also meets what it means. Open the leaderboard and choose Challenge your class for a link — everyone who opens it plays the same five words.
Nobody signs in and nobody types a name. If you want this week’s list on paper instead, the worksheet generator will print it.
Questions
How do you play hangman?
A word is hidden and you guess one letter at a time. Every letter that is in the word is filled in wherever it appears. Every letter that is not pops one of your balloons. Guess the whole word before they are all gone.
How many balloons do I get?
It depends on the difficulty. Easy gives you eight, Medium six and Hard five. The youngest grades play on Easy by default, because a five year old with two hundred words behind them cannot afford the same margin for error as an adult, and losing four rounds in a row teaches a child that they are bad at spelling rather than teaching them to spell.
Why balloons instead of a gallows?
Because this is played by six year olds. The rules of hangman are worth keeping and the picture is not, so a wrong guess pops one of six balloons instead. The game works exactly the same way — you can see at a glance how many mistakes you have left — without a hanging figure on a classroom screen.
Where do the words come from?
Each round is five words from a real SpellingJoy grade list, so a child is guessing the words they are actually being taught that year rather than random dictionary entries. Most words also carry their definition, which you can reveal as a clue.
How is hangman scored?
A word is worth twice its length. Wrong guesses cost two points each and a clue costs three, so a long word guessed cleanly is worth far more than a short one guessed by working through the alphabet. A finished word always scores at least one point.
Can I use hangman with my class?
Yes. Open the leaderboard and choose Challenge your class to get a link. Everyone who opens it plays the same five words, so the class can be compared on one board. No accounts, no names, no student data.
Is it free?
Yes. Free, no ads, no account, and nothing about the player is collected.
More word games
- Word Search — find the spelling words hidden in the grid.
- Spelling Bee Puzzle — seven letters, one in the middle, a new one every day.
- Spelling list generator — build this week’s list in a minute.