Free Hangman

How to play

1. Press Play. Godfrey chalks a word on the slate as one blank per letter, with its category and its length above it.
2. Tap a seed packet, or type a letter, to guess it. If the letter is in the answer it is chalked in everywhere it appears, and its packet gets a stamp.
3. If it is not, its packet is struck through and a piece goes up on the scarecrow in the bed. With eight misses the scarecrow goes up one piece at a time; with six, some pieces go up two at a time.
4. Find every letter before the scarecrow is finished. If you are stuck, Hint chalks in the first letter still hidden and counts as a miss, and Show word, pressed twice, shows the answer as a loss.
5. When the word is done, a ribbon over the packets shows how it went, with a button for the next word. Menu opens the categories, today’s word, Settings, your statistics and the rules.

Controls

• Touch or mouse: tap a seed packet to guess its letter. Hint, Show word and Menu sit at the front edge of the bench, under your thumb.
• Keyboard: type any letter to guess it. ? gives a hint, Enter goes on to the next word once this one is done, Escape closes a sheet and Tab moves between the buttons.
• Restart in the toolbar puts a fresh word from the same category on the slate (a word you had begun counts as shown). Today’s word stays put, since it is played once. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.

What you do

Sorrel Row Hangman is the classic hangman word game with a garden in place of the gallows. It is played at a potting bench on a community garden plot at dusk. Raised beds of cabbages and leeks run back to a picket fence, bean canes stand against a low amber sky, and a shed with a lit window keeps the watering can company. The word is chalked on a framed slate as one blank per letter, with its category above it, and the letters are kraft seed packets laid out on the bench, beside a seed tray, an enamel mug and a ball of twine. Each wrong guess adds a piece to a scarecrow being put up in the empty bed: the post, the crossbar, the head, a coat, two straw hands, a hat and, last, the face. Godfrey, a house sparrow in a tweed flat cap and a canvas gardener’s apron with a pencil in the pocket, watches from his fence post. He breathes, blinks and follows your guesses, nods at a letter that lands, raises a brow at one that does not, lifts his cap when you solve it, and if the scarecrow is finished he hops onto its hat, entirely unbothered. There are 735 single words and 377 phrases, chosen for grown-ups, in seven categories: In the kitchen, In the garden, Travel, Nature, Jobs, Geography, and Idioms and phrases.

• 1,112 answers written for grown-ups: 735 single words and 377 phrases in seven categories, In the kitchen, In the garden, Travel, Nature, Jobs, Geography, and Idioms and phrases. Everyday words, nothing obscure and nothing offensive.
• Single words or phrase mode. A phrase shows its spaces, apostrophes and hyphens from the start, so the short words can give the long ones away.
• Eight misses by default, or six for the classic count, when some pieces of the scarecrow go up two at a time. The misses so far are written on the slate.
• A hint that chalks in the first letter still hidden, wherever it appears, for the price of one miss. Show word asks once before it gives the answer away.
• Today’s word: one single word a day, the same for everyone on the same date, played once, with a streak and a result line you can copy that gives no letters away.
• An on-screen keyboard of seed packets and your own keyboard both work. No clock, statistics for each setting and category, reduced motion support and a saved game in this browser.

Tips worth knowing

• Open with A, E or R on a single word. By our count of our own list, A is in 427 of the 735 single words, E in 426 and R in 375, then O, I and N. On a phrase, open with E: it is in 310 of the 377 phrases.
• After the first two or three letters, read the pattern rather than the alphabet. In our simulation, a player that kept guessing in a fixed order of our list’s most common letters solved 166 of the 735 single words with eight misses; one that only guessed letters from English words that fit the blanks solved 594.
• Short words are the hard ones. With six misses, that same pattern-reading player solved 73 of the 126 words of three to five letters, but 64 of the 76 words of ten letters or more: a long word has more letters to find, and every one you find narrows it down.
• Not every word has an E. 309 of the 735 single words have none, so if E misses, try A, O and I next. Every word in the list has at least one of A, E, I, O and U.
• On a phrase, start with the short words. 161 of the 377 phrases have a word of three letters or fewer, and THE alone turns up in 45. Only 14 different words of two letters appear in the phrases, OF and IN most often, and the letters they give you land all through the phrase.
• In Geography, think of places. The pattern-reading player in our simulation knew English words but no place names, and it solved 87 of the 205 Geography words with eight misses against 507 of the 530 words in the other categories.
• Treat Hint as a sure letter that costs what a wrong one would. In our simulation, taking a hint two misses from the end changed the pattern-reading player’s wins from 594 to 597 of 735 words with eight misses, and from 338 to 332 of 377 phrases. It gets you unstuck; it rarely saves a word.

Accessibility

• Everything can be played with a keyboard: type a letter to guess it, ? gives a hint, Enter goes on to the next word, and every button is reachable with Tab.
• Every seed packet is a button labeled with its letter and, once guessed, whether it is in the answer. Each guess is read out with the answer so far, a blank for each letter still hidden, and the misses left.
• Color is never the only clue: a letter in the answer is chalked on the slate and its packet stamped with a check mark, a letter that is not has its packet struck through, and the misses so far are written on the slate.
• Nothing is timed, a wrong letter only brings a dry remark, and Show word asks before it gives the answer away.
• Reduced motion chalks letters in at once, puts up scarecrow pieces without the drop, keeps Godfrey still and draws the flourish whole. Sound is optional and never needed to play.

Questions

Guides and roundups

• How to Play Hangman: Rules, Letters and Strategy
• Games Like Wordle: 15 Wordle Alternatives to Try

Game details

Lovely on tablets

Genre

Cozy Classic

Difficulty

Easy

Session

A minute or two a word, saved as you go

Inputs

Keyboard, Mouse, Touch

Devices

Desktop, Tablet, Mobile

Made by

CozyWorld

Updated

2026-10-31

A gentle word game with no purchases, accounts or timers. The picture is a scarecrow, not a hanged figure, and the word lists leave out offensive and grim words.