Hangman and Evil Hangman
Hangman in the browser, on a phone, a tablet or a keyboard: 3,239 words in fourteen categories, and every one comes with its definition. Play it straight, or play CRUEL, an evil hangman that has not picked a word and dodges your guesses for as long as the list allows.
How to play
Guess letters. Six wrong ones finish the drawing and the game. Tap the keys or use a real keyboard; Enter deals the next word.
CRUEL has not picked a word. It holds every word that still fits what it has told you, and each guess it keeps whichever group is largest — so it dodges for as long as the list allows. It never lies: the word it shows you at the end fitted every answer it gave.
Pick as many categories as you like and they play as one pile — Oklahoma's sky, map, ground, ballgame and oilfield, the Sooners and the Thunder, three shows, the kitchen, the animal kingdom, medicine and technology. Pick none and you get all of them.
How evil hangman works
Most hangman games choose a word and wait. CRUEL starts with a crowd instead: up to 400 words of one length, all still in play.
Each time you guess a letter, it sorts the words it holds by where that letter would appear, and keeps the biggest group. Guess E, and if more of its words lack an E than share any one pattern of E, you get a miss. It will hand you a letter when that keeps the bigger crowd.
It never cheats. By the time the board is full it is down to one word, and that word fitted every answer it gave. The end of the round tells you how many words it was hiding in when you started.
Levels and records
EASY deals four- to seven-letter words, picked up front and played straight. TRICKY deals eight to thirteen letters, still an honest game. CRUEL plays five to nine letters and changes the rules instead of the length.
Every level allows six wrong guesses: head, body, two arms, two legs. When only the legs are left you can look at the definition once. In CRUEL that pins the game to one word first, because a definition is only true of one word.
Records stay in your browser, per level: your longest winning streak and your cleanest win. CRUEL can be beaten, but rarely, so the streak is the number worth chasing.
The words
There are 3,239 words across fourteen categories: animals, foods, medicine, sports, technology, weather, Oklahoma places, the plains, the oilfield, the Sooners, the Thunder, and three TV shows — How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family and House.
No word appears twice, in one category or across them, and every word is four to thirteen letters of plain A to Z.
Every word also carries a definition, shown when the round ends, win or lose.