Hangillion
Where hangman comes from
A pencil, a scrap of paper and a word nobody else knows: a short history of one of the simplest word games there is.
A game from the paper age
Hangman needs no equipment at all, which is probably why nobody can say who invented it. A game very like it turns up in Victorian collections of children’s games from the 1890s, played with a pencil and a slate or a scrap of paper, and it has been played in classrooms, on long journeys and in waiting rooms ever since.
How the rules settled
The version most people know is simple: one player thinks of a word and draws a dash for every letter, the other guesses letters, right guesses are written in, and every wrong one adds a part to a drawing of a gallows and a figure. Variations changed only the number of parts, so some games give you ten wrong guesses instead of six. Hangillion keeps the six.
Why it lasted
It teaches spelling without feeling like it, it works with any word and any language, and it has a built-in tension: every guess is a small bet. It also has a dark side, an old joke about a game of words that ends badly for a drawing, which every generation of players has found funnier than their teachers did.
To the browser
Hangman was among the first word games on home computers, and today there are thousands of versions online. Hangillion takes the old idea and leans into the dark joke: instead of a stick figure on a gallows, the man meets one of 15 different endings, and you can play with friends in a room. If you want to get better at it, read which letters to guess first.
Play HangillionAll the endings
How deep does your knowledge go?
Seven prompts a day, twenty seconds each. Obvious answers float on the tip of the iceberg; rare ones sink all the way to the trench.
▼ Start today’s iceberg ▼