One of the most popular children’s word games, Hangman, has been played since Victorian times. Although many adults think that the hanging and hanging man motif is inappropriate, due to the inherent brutality of the images, it is precisely this brutality that attracts children and has maintained the popular game over the years.
Many attempts have been made to sanitize the game by replacing the gallows and hanging man with less violent images. An example is apples falling from a tree, but falling apples lack the ruthless appeal that hanging has for many children.
For teachers, Hangman is often used in the classroom to practice spelling, check vocabulary, or just to entertain students at the end of a class. There are several ways to play, but the most typical is to draw a gallows on a piece of paper or on the board and then invite the player to guess the letters of the unknown word. Each incorrect assumption causes a part of the hangman to be added to the image. The head is the first to be added followed by the body, legs and arms. If the picture is completed before the word is guessed, the game is lost and the figure hangs.
The number of possible incorrect assumptions is determined by the number of parts of the figure that must be drawn to complete the picture. Children often insist that the eyes, nose, and mouth be included in the drawing, and sometimes even the ears. The typical allowed number of guesses is between eight and ten.
With twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, allowing too much guesswork practically guarantees that the player will win. This is particularly true if the player employs strategy. Most kids don’t, but for those who do, and the many adults who also enjoy playing the game, employing a Hangman strategy greatly increases the chances of winning.
The most used letter in English is the letter e. The other four vowels, a, o, i and u, are the third, fourth, fifth and twelfth most used letters. The other most commonly used letters in English, in order of use, are t, n, s, h, r, d, and l. By using these letter frequency lists, a Hangman player can increase their chances of guessing the correct word. Of course, less common words like rhythm can destroy such strategies.
Teachers will normally use only those words that they know their students will be familiar with, or that they want their students to practice with. As children’s vocabulary and letter frequency comprehension is much lower than that of adults, it is unlikely that they will use any strategy other than guessing all six vowels in English, a, e, i, o, ue, and first , since they know that all English words, apart from a few, have at least one vowel.
Although it was developed in the era of pencil and paper, Hangman still has a place in the modern world, and many versions can be played with the help of a computer. Computers and databases make it possible for a game of Hangman to have an almost inexhaustible supply of words, and these words can be drawn at random, making it unlikely that the same word will be played twice. This makes play an important way to build vocabulary.
Another important use of computer-based Hangman games is that they can be prepared with particular sets of words or lexicons. This vocabulary can be valuable for the teacher who wants to limit the content of the game to a list of vocabulary that he wants his students to practice. The computer also makes the game more attractive to the player by introducing multimedia elements such as sounds and movement into the game. With the game’s lexicon safely stored in a database, the game can be played over and over again to recycle the language.
It was the Victorians who first played hangman with paper and pencil. Our modern computers would amaze these people of a hundred years ago, but there is no doubt that the game of today would have captivated them as much as the children of today.