Play with a pencil
Printable Hangman Sheets
The gallows is drawn, the slots are ruled and the alphabet is there to cross off. All you have to bring is a word nobody will guess.
Size
The usual compromise — enough space, enough games.
Style
Pale blue rules on warm paper — what the game looks like in a school exercise book.
Paper
Sheets
For a PDF, pick Save as PDF as the printer in the print dialog.
Quick rules
- Set up. One player thinks of a word and draws a short line for each of its letters. The other player guesses. Thirteen slots are printed; use as many as the word needs and cross out the rest.
- Guessing. Name a letter. If it appears, the setter writes it on every line where it belongs. If it does not, they draw one part of the figure — and cross the letter off the alphabet strip either way.
- How many wrong guesses. The usual figure has six parts: head, body, two arms, two legs. Agree before you start whether hands, feet and a face count as extra parts — that is the difference between a hard game and an easy one.
- Winning. The guesser wins by completing the word before the figure is finished, and may guess the whole word at any time. The setter wins if the figure is completed first.
- Choosing a word. Long words are easier than they look, because they contain common letters. The hard ones are short with unusual letters — rhythm, jazzy, fjord. A word with no vowel repeated is a good start.
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What you get
Each game block holds three things: a drawn gallows so nobody has to sketch one crookedly, thirteen letter slots for the word, and the whole alphabet to cross off as it is used. Two, three or four blocks to a page depending on how much room you want.
The alphabet strip is the point
Hangman on a blank sheet has one recurring argument — did we already say M? — and one recurring waste, which is guessing the same letter twice. A printed alphabet removes both, and it quietly makes the game better: the guesser can see which vowels are gone, and the setter can see how close the guesser really is.
Choosing a word that actually wins
Most people reach for something long, and long is the wrong instinct. A fifteen-letter word is full of E, A, R, S and T, and three lucky guesses lay half of it bare. The words that survive are short, use rare letters, and repeat nothing: jazzy, fjord, lymph, rhythm, syzygy.
The mirror rule for the guesser: start with E and A, but stop naming letters the moment the shape is readable. You may guess the whole word at any point, and a guess that is right costs nothing.
For the classroom
Hangman is spelling practice that children ask to do again. Set the words from the week’s list and the game does the revision for you — a class will happily spell twenty words in ten minutes to beat each other, which no worksheet achieves. The four-game sheet runs a full lesson.
The sheets you print are yours to use, in class or commercially.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the alphabet printed on the sheet? Because the argument in every game of hangman is whether a letter has already been guessed. Crossing letters off a printed strip settles it, and it also turns the game into something useful: the guesser can see at a glance which vowels are left.
How many wrong guesses should a player get? The classic figure has six parts — head, body, two arms, two legs — which is a fair game for adults. For children, agree on ten by adding hands, feet, eyes and a mouth. Decide before the first letter, not after the fifth.
What if the word is longer than thirteen letters? Thirteen slots cover almost every word worth setting. For a longer one, write across two rows of slots or simply carry on past the printed lines — the slots are a guide, not a limit.
What makes a genuinely hard word? Not length. Long words contain common letters and give themselves away. The hard ones are short with unusual letters and no repeated vowel — jazzy, fjord, rhythm, lynx. A word where the same letter appears three times is much easier than it looks.
Is there a good guessing order? E, then A, then the rest of the vowels, then R S T L N. But the better habit is to stop guessing letters as soon as the pattern is readable — the guesser may name the whole word at any time, and that costs nothing if you are right.
How do I get it as a PDF? Press Print, then choose “Save as PDF” as the printer in the print dialog. Every browser has that option built in.
More games that need nothing but paper: Tic-Tac-Toe sheets, Dots and Boxes and Sea Battle grids.