Eden Richman Week 7 - The Game Hangman

     If you are in any classes with me, you know that one of my favorite things to do when there is free time is play hangman on the smartboard. You have also probably played hangman if not with me then at some point. Maybe you even wondered how the game came to be, and why children are playing such a gruesome game. Hangman is a strange game with strange strategies, and I just want to take a moment to appreciate it, and maybe learn a little too.

    Like many other widespread pencil and paper games, the origin of Hangman is unknown. It dates back to at least the 1800s and is still a staple children's game today. Something that comes along with such an old game is a set of rules which is fluid. I still remember the first time someone asked me for the category my chosen word was in. It was my first year at Donna Klein and little 12-year-old Eden was heartbroken by the way hangman was played here. I wrote the category but couldn't help thinking that I was cheating. While I was thinking so much about how wrong the categories were, I was helping out the guesser by giving the man not only a head, torso, arms, and legs but also hands, feet, a smile, ears, and a top hat. I have seen many word-choosers use this trick to essentially give the guesser an unlimited amount of guesses (I once drew all ten fingers before the guesser could finally guess the word). The major problem here is that hangman is presented as a competitive game when really both people have more fun if the guesser guesses correctly.

    It is also close to impossible to improve at the game after a certain point. People have strategies to guess vowels first because they have to be in every word, but then it is just based on luck. Someone once told me that the most common letter in the alphabet was "D" so that's my first consonant guess, but a quick google search showed me that the most common one is "R". It seems like no one has a real strategy.

   So if no one has a real strategy, and no one knows the rules, then what's the point of it?  Is it just a mindless game? What are your go-to words that you use as a word-chooser, and what are your go-to letters when you are a guesser?



Comments

  1. Mrs. HNovember 10, 2021 at 11:11 AM

    So disturbing. Seriously. A kids' game where we are hanging a guy? That is just gruesome. That being said, it's a word game and I love it. I generally go with the letters from the Wheel of Fortune bonus round (RSTLNE) and then branch into P, M, H and so on

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    1. AnonymousNovember 10, 2021 at 1:41 PM

      The hanging part used to bother me, but it is a lot better than video games little kids play now. Fortnite, Among Us etc. almost every popular video game has some sort of killing that is so much more disturbing than hangman. When I was little I didn't even understand what the hanging was! I thought I just had to draw a man.

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  2. AnonymousNovember 11, 2021 at 10:33 AM

    Hi Eden, it is interesting to see what goes through your mind when you play hangman. I can attest to your experience in hangman, but I never realized that you like to start off with the letter "D". I will keep that trick under my belt in my next game of hangman. While I agree that this game can often seem pointless because it is difficult to improve at, I still think that this game is brilliant. It must've taken a genius to create a game where people have to guess a word based on a hint. The game's complexity boggles my mind.

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