Hangman: play free online

It runs on a phone or a computer, in any of ten languages.

How to play Hangman on Klyo

Pick the daily puzzle or tap a category, and the empty tiles of the word appear at once. On a phone you tap letters on the screen keyboard. On a computer you click them with the mouse or simply type. A correct letter appears in every position of the word at the same moment, and its key turns green. A wrong letter turns red, joins the list beside the chalk drawing and adds one more line to it.

Rules and scoring

You solve a word by revealing all its letters, and you lose it on the sixth miss. A solved word gives 100 points plus 20 for every miss you did not use, so 220 is the most a single word can earn. Every hint takes away 25 points, although a solved word always pays at least 10. A hint reveals a random missing letter and does not count as a miss. It never gives away the final letter, which stays for you to find.

Daily puzzle and free play

The daily puzzle is five words from five different categories, the same for everyone playing in that language. New words arrive after midnight UTC. You share three hints across all five, and losing a word does not stop the puzzle, so the best possible total is 1100 points. Finishing the puzzle day after day builds your streak. Free play serves word after word from the category you choose, or from all of them, and ends at the first word you lose. Words do not come back until you have been through the whole pool, and every third word you solve adds a hint, up to five. Your final score goes on the Klyo leaderboard.

Hangman strategy: how to solve hard words

Open with the vowels E, A, I and O, then try common consonants such as R, T, N and S. The category tells you a lot about the shape of a word: in Jobs many answers end in ER, like TEACHER or FARMER, so one good guess can open the whole ending. A hint costs 25 points and a miss costs 20, which means trying a letter is the better deal early on. Save your hints for the moment when one or two misses remain. This matters most in free play, where a single lost word ends the whole run.

Eight categories and ten languages

The categories are Space, Animals, Food, Nature, Sport, Home, Jobs and Music, with 20 words in each and 160 in every language. In English the words run from 3 to 11 letters. You choose the language on the chalkboard menu, and the words, the labels and the keyboard layout all change with it.

Where did Hangman come from?

Nobody knows exactly how this game began. The earliest variant usually cited appears in a book of children's games compiled by Alice Gomme in 1894. Players there guessed the names of birds, beasts and fishes with no drawing at all, and simply counted their attempts. It still needs nothing more than paper and a pencil, and here the game keeps the score for you.