Hangman solver

Shrink a hangman gallows with pattern logic

Hangman is pattern search under pressure. You know the length, you know a letter or two, and every wrong guess costs a limb on the stick figure. This page uses crossword-style masks on ENABLE so you can see which words still fit before you burn a consonant.

Type the pattern with ? for unknowns — ??P?? for a five-letter word with P in the middle — and read the survivors. Exclude greys by keeping failed letters out of your next guess. The solver runs locally after ENABLE loads; we never receive the partial word as a backend query.

Worked ENABLE examples

Pattern P???? (five letters). ENABLE candidates include PAPER, PLANT, PROUD, PIANO, POWER and many others. If E failed earlier, drop every word with E. If A hit in position 2, the mask becomes PA??? and the list collapses to PAPER, PARTY, PAINT-shaped entries that ENABLE actually contains.

Pattern ?IGHT. LIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, MIGHT, SIGHT, FIGHT, TIGHT, EIGHT appear among ENABLE five-letter words. Guessing vowels first is optional; looking at the candidate list often shows that a single consonant (L vs N vs R) splits the field faster than another vowel.

Pattern S??RE. SHARE, SPARE, SCARE, STORE, SWORE and kin. If O is already wrong, STORE and SWORE leave; if H is known, SHARE stands out.

Longer gallows: C??????R (eight letters). Keep length on 8. ENABLE may offer COMPUTER, CONSIDAR-shaped misses, CRUISER is seven, while CONQUER is seven too — the length chip is doing real work. Combine with known downs from a party whiteboard.

Letter-frequency habits (without fake statistics)

Players often try E, A, R, I, O, T, N, S early because those letters show up often in English word lists. That habit is a heuristic, not a promise. When the pattern is already narrow, ignore global frequency and read the ENABLE list in front of you — the gallows only cares about this word.

Hangman vs Wordle vs crosswords

Wordle tells you yellows; hangman usually does not. Crosswords give clue text; hangman gives length and social pressure. Use the Wordle helper when yellows exist, the crossword solver when clue text matters, and this page when you only have a mask.

Fair play

Party hangman with a “no devices” rule means put the phone down. For setting puzzles as a host, building worksheets, or practising alone, the helper is appropriate. Ads stay under the tool.

Host tips for party hangman

Choose ENABLE-verified words before guests arrive. Avoid proper nouns unless your house rules allow them. Keep a length between five and eight for mixed-age groups; longer masks frustrate, shorter masks end in thirty seconds. When you are the guesser, open this page only if the table allows notes — otherwise enjoy the gallows the old way.

Example teaching mask ??MM?? (six letters) points people toward COMMON-shaped thoughts; ENABLE may also offer SIMMER, HAMMER, RUMMER-type hits. Discuss why double M changes the guess order: testing M early is rational once the pattern shows a twin.

Avoiding wasted guesses

If the candidate list shares a letter in the same position, guess that letter next. If the candidates diverge across many letters, prefer a letter that appears in most survivors rather than a pet favourite. The helper makes that scan visible; a paper list works too if devices are banned.

Links into the rest of the site

After you reveal the word, drop its letters into the unscrambler to show students the neighbour words. For daily five-letter habits, switch to the Wordle helper. For grid masks with clue text, prefer the crossword solver.

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