Easy: five letters, one repeated vowel
- Input
- pt-BR: rena | en-US: santa
- Expected output
- 4 / 5
In "santa", opening with A reveals two of the five positions at once. Two misses still leave the round comfortable.
Hangman
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Christmas Hangman: Words to Play Online
Christmas hangman picks a word or phrase from the theme and you guess one letter at a time before you burn through 8 misses. There are 108 items in English, from "santa" to "gingerbread house", 38 of them with a space or hyphen that the game reveals at the start. Difficulty comes from length: up to 5 letters is easy, 6 to 8 is medium and 9 or more is hard.
How Christmas hangman works and which letters to try first
- Three rules are worth knowing before you start. Accents and the cedilla do not complicate the keyboard: the game uses only the 26 letters of the alphabet, and pressing A reveals "á", "ã" and "â" together, while the word shows on screen with the right accent. Spaces and hyphens are born revealed, so in "string lights" you only have to find 12 letters. And the game uses 8 misses, not 6: instead of the hanged figure, a little robot loses one part per miss, a lighter version suitable for all ages.
- There is a strategy that comes straight from the bank's own numbers. Among the 108 English Christmas words, the letter E shows up in 67, A in 61 and R in 55. Opening with E, A and R tends to reveal something within the first few guesses, and then N, I and S come next. In Portuguese, among the 98, A appears in 73 words, E in 64 and O in 56. Count the length of the word from the blanks before guessing: with 5 letters, as in "santa", open with the most common vowels in the bank; with 16, as in "gingerbread house", the same common letters are still the best bet, because they will show up several times.
- The split by difficulty in English is 27 easy words, 38 medium and 43 hard; in Portuguese it is 28, 29 and 41. The hard tier is big because the theme's phrases, like "christmas tree" (13 letters), "gingerbread house" (16) and "hot chocolate" (12), are long, but the spaces already revealed and the common vowels usually open the way after the first hits. The longest word in the English bank has 16 letters and the longest in Portuguese has 18. The game does not repeat a word inside the same filter until all are used.
Five real Christmas hangman words and how many letters count
Medium: an everyday word
- Input
- pt-BR: presente | en-US: present
- Expected output
- 8 / 7
The E shows up twice in "present". Once it lands, the rest of the word falls into place fast.
Hard: nine letters, few repeats
- Input
- pt-BR: champanhe | en-US: mistletoe
- Expected output
- 9 / 9
The T and the E each show up twice, so a single hit on either one can reveal two positions. Try S and L next.
Hard: a two-word phrase
- Input
- pt-BR: árvore de natal | en-US: christmas tree
- Expected output
- 13 / 13
The space is already shown. The first word has 9 letters and the second has 4, a clue that helps when guessing vowels.
Hard: the longest phrase
- Input
- pt-BR: arroz com passas | en-US: gingerbread house
- Expected output
- 14 / 16
Two big words, with the space already revealed. The E shows up in both of them, so open with it.
Full game FAQ
Each category (animals, fruit, colors, everyday objects, countries, jobs, sports and Christmas) has its own word list. Difficulty filters that list by word length, easy pulls shorter words, hard pulls longer ones; if a combination has too few words of that length, the game fills in with the rest of the category so the draw never gets stuck.
Frequently asked questions
How many words does Christmas hangman have?
It has 108 words and phrases in English and 98 in Portuguese, written separately for each language with no repeats inside the category. With it, the game now has 8 categories.
How is difficulty set?
By the number of letters you have to guess, not counting spaces and hyphens: up to 5 letters is easy, 6 to 8 is medium, 9 or more is hard. If a filter runs out of words, the game fills in with the rest of the category.
How many misses am I allowed?
Eight. Each miss makes the little robot lose a part and on the eighth it powers down. A repeated guess does not count as a miss, and the stats show your fewest misses in a win for the Christmas category.
Can I play with my computer keyboard?
Yes. Any letter you type counts as a guess, including accented ones, which the game treats as the base letter. On a phone, use the on-screen keyboard. Either way, the game runs right in the browser, no sign-up.