OddThinking

So, you think you are pretty good at Hangman? You think you have what it takes?

Maybe you’ve pulled off a few scaffers (a perfect game where the initial scaffold is never drawn) and you’ve got cocky.

Maybe you’ve made your neighbour’s kid cry by throwing GYPSY in his face.

Maybe your friends are saying “Dude, you are good at this game. Have you ever considered turning pro?”

Maybe your freehand scaffolds look like perfect right angles to you, and your submissions to the Amateur Freestyle Six-Line Corpse Drawing Competitions depictions are so realistic that people turn white.

Well, I am here to tell you the truth.

Someone has gotta tell ya.

You suck at Hangman.

So, either sit down, shut up and learn something or go away and do something else. No skin off my nose, either way.

Today’s Lessons

I am going to ignore several key parts of successful strategy here.

For example, the psychology of the sport of Hangman can wait for another day. Hey, don’t underestimate the effect of the simple leg bluff – feigning filling a letter for your desperate opponent, only to shift up and fill in one of the legs. You scoff now, but when they are under pressure, simple tactics like this can break a player and have them guessing letters they have already tried.

Instead, we are going to look at two parts – determining the initial letter, and slowing down the opponent from determining any letters.

Initial Letters

Some letters are more common than others. (Sorry, am I going too fast already? Keep up!)

Here’s what Wikipedia thinks are the most common letters in English, in decreasing order of frequency:

ETAOIN SHRDLC UMWFGY PBVKJX QZ

Wikipedia’s Hangman strategy suggests guessing in this order. Shows they are as incompetent as you are. Or wait – are you the one who edited that page? It would explain a lot!

Letter distribution in Hangman ain’t the same as a corpus of written text. Written text is biased towards common words like A and THE. Nobody has made a corpus of HANGMAN words available. Such databases are highly valued by the professional teams, and are never leak out – but a dictionary list is close enough for a player like you.

So, go and find out the most common letters in a dictionary.

Wait. Stop. You’ll probably stuff it up. I’ll do it for you.

I am using an international (CSW) dictionary. I’ll change to an North American dictionary the first time we see a North American Hangman champion… ha, as if! They play Hangman like they play “soccer”.

So here is the letter frequency of words in a dictionary.

ESIARN OTLCDU PMGHBY FVKWZX QJ

But we have more information to rely on. We know how many letters are in the word…

Word Length	Letter Frequency List
2	OAEIUM HYNSTD BFPGLR XKWJZC Q
3	AEOISU TRDNPG MYBHLW FCKVZX JQ
4	EASOIR LTNUDP MKHYGC BFWVZJ XQ
5	ESAORI LTNUDY CPMHGB KFWVZJ XQ
6	ESARIO NLTDUC MPGHBY KFWVZJ XQ
7	ESAIRN OTLDUC GPMHBY KFWVZX JQ
8	ESIARN OTLDCU GMPHBY FKWVZX QJ
9	ESIARN OTLCDU GPMHBY FKVWZX QJ
10	ESIARN TOLCDU PMGHBY FVKWZX QJ
11	EISANR TOLCUP DMGHBY FVKWZX QJ
12	EISNAT ORLCPU MDGHYB FVZKWX QJ
13	IESNAT ORLCPM UHGDYB VFZXKW QJ
14	ISETNA ORLCPM UHDGYB VFZXKW QJ
15	ISENTA ORLCPM UHDGYB VFZXKW QJ

So, now we have the order of letters to try, until we get a match and can start narrowing it down based on our vocabulary knowledge, right?

Wrong, man. C’mon! The fate of an innocent man, wrongly condemned to death, is in your hands here…

Once we know that E (or whichever the most common letter is) is not in the word, the chance of there being an S in the word drops dramatically. We need to know what letters are the most common, and then what letters are the most common given the common letters aren’t present…

Word Length	Letter Presence List
2	OAEIUY HMS
3	AOEIUY HTZRC
4	EAOIUY SRF
5	EAOSIU YH
6	EAOIUY S
7	EAIOUS Y
8	EIAOU
9	EIAOU
10	EIOAU
11	EIOAL
12	EIOAL
13	IEOA
14	IEOA
15	IEOR

Still haven’t got it? Let me explain again. This says that for a 12 letter word, the most common letter is E. But if there is no E, the next most common letter is I. If there is no E and no I, the next most common letter is O.

This chart shows why picking a long word is stupid. You are guaranteed a letter placement in only 4 guesses. Hopefully even you aren’t that stupid when you are given a choice.

It also shows why most players refuse to play with less than 5 letters.

You should memorise this chart. Of course, I have to remind you – if you simply play according to this basic strategy, professionals will be able to tell, and play back at you accordingly. Make sure you add some unpredictability to your attacks. (Don’t you dare call them “guesses”. Hangman is a game of probability and skill. Never guess.)

Word Submission

Now, those people these days who are buying Xboxes just to play the latest version of Hangman and who are showing off their skills at selecting letters with a Wii remote don’t understand that Hangman was initially a two player game. It is necessary not only to be able to narrow down the correct word but also to select difficult words for your opponent to attempt. In an International Competition, there are no computers to do this for you.

So the big question amongst beginner losers like you is “Is GYPSY the best word?”

Well, it is, indeed, a good word, but a bit of a cliche. More than once, some punk kid has come up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and presented five dashes as a challenge. I can tell from the look in their eyes, they think they have a stumper. I start with “Y” in these cases, and when the look changes to bewilderment, whisper “GYPSY” before they have even started filling in the second Y on the page.

The main feature that makes GYPSY such a good word is that the only vowel is a Y.

There are lots of other words like that:

Word Length	Words only containing Y as a vowel
2	BY FY KY MY NY
3	BYS CLY CRY DRY FLY FRY GYM GYP HYP LYM MYC NYS PLY PRY PYX RHY SHY SKY SLY SNY SPY STY SWY SYN THY TRY TYG
4	BYRL CYST DRYS FYRD GYMP GYMS GYNY GYPS HWYL HYMN HYPS JYNX KYND LYCH LYMS LYNX MYCS MYTH PRYS RYND SCRY SKRY SKYF SKYR SPRY SYNC SYND SYPH TRYP
5	BYRLS CHYND CRYPT CYSTS DRYLY FLYBY FYRDS GHYLL GLYPH GRYPT GYMPS GYNNY GYPPY GYPSY HWYLS HYMNS KYDST KYNDS LYMPH LYNCH MYRRH MYTHS MYTHY NYMPH PSYCH PYGMY RYNDS SHYLY SKYFS SKYRS SLYLY STYMY SYLPH SYNCH SYNCS SYNDS SYNTH SYPHS THYMY TRYPS TRYST
6	CRYPTS FLYBYS FLYSCH GHYLLS GLYCYL GLYPHS LYMPHS MYRRHS NYMPHS PSYCHS RHYTHM SPHYNX SPRYLY SYLPHS SYLPHY SYNCHS SYNTHS SYZYGY TRYSTS
7	GLYCYLS NYMPHLY RHYTHMS

What’s that? You don’t think KYDST is really a word? Listen, mister, it is time to get serious. This is not some kid’s game you are playing. Hangman is about life and death.

But we can go further.

Some words have NO vowels. Yeah, that’s right. Your teacher lied to you. Stop sniffling and look for yourself.

Word Length	Words with no vowels
2	CH HM MM SH ST
3	BRR CWM PHT HMM NTH PST SHH TSK TWP ZZZ
4	BRRR CWMS PFFT PSST TSKS ZZZS
5	CRWTH CWTCH PHPHT
6	TSKTSK CRWTHS
7	TSKTSKS

Some of those words are trading off a high risk. Even a new professional player, once they see _ S _ _ S _ S, will instantly jump to to TSKTSKS. The mid-level professionals will know it immediately that you start drawing body parts after they attempted the “Y”.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Actually, it is probably too much, but I can’t wait for you forever.

Next Lesson

In the next lesson, maybe we can address some of the shortcomings in what’s been presented here. What’s that? You didn’t notice any shortcomings. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.

To start with, I have counted the number of times the letter appears in the dictionary. That’s wrong, but about as much as I figured you could handle. It should be the number of words. The letter E shouldn’t get counted twice for appearing twice in words like DWEEB, SHEEP, WEED and DISAGREEABLE, just to name a few examples that jump to mind for some reason while I am talking to you.

Also, we also have looked at the speed of getting the first letter matched, but of course that isn’t the real metric. The real metric is how many guesses it takes to solve. Maybe sometimes a failed guess gives more information than a successful one – e.g. Knowing there is no vowels might give MORE information than knowing there are none of A, E, I, O & U but there is a Y in the second position… So next lesson, we will look at how Lempel-Ziv can help us.

No, Lempel-Ziv is NOT a legal Hangman word.

Sometimes, I don’t know why I bother.

Update

Finally, a dude who does NOT suck at Hangman.