Home Word Games Cheater Hangman

This is similar to hangman, except that the computer cheats! Can you beat the computer at its own game?

Cheater Hangman Game

Cheater Hangman is just like regular hangman, with one small exception: the computer cheats! Now, at first I'm not going to tell you how the computer cheats - I'm just going to tell you that even though the computer cheats, it is possible to beat this game. In fact, if you work at it long enough, you just might get good at beating the cheater!

Play just like regular hangman - click a letter to guess. The computer will let you know if your guess is a good one or not. If it's a correct guess, the letter will appear in all the appropriate spaces in the word. If your guess is incorrect, the computer will draw in more of the hanging man. Game is over when you guess the word or run out of guesses!

While you play, try to figure out how the computer is cheating. Once you think you've got it figured out, go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find out if you were right!

When you get tired of playing Cheater Hangman, you can Click here to play the REAL HANGMAN!

How The Computer Cheats

Are you sure you want to know how the computer cheats? If you haven't tried to figure it out on your own, stop reading!

Or you can scroll down to find out.

Okay, before you read any further, let me assure you, the computer's words are all real words! The computer does not cheat by picking fake words. At times, with absurdly obscure words, it may seem like the computer is just inventing things out of thin air, but really, all the words come from the Enable2K dictionary.

So, if you thought that was how the computer was cheating, go back and play some more, before you keep reading.

*scroll down*

The Cheat Method

The trick is this: the computer does not pick a word until it absolutely has to. The game begins with the computer selecting a word length, but not a word.

When you guess a letter (let's say you guess the letter 'N'), the computer consults its word list to see if there are words which don't contain an 'N'. No problem. There are thousands of them! So the computer tells you your guess is wrong. (From this you can conclude that your first guess will ALWAYS be wrong!). Now let's say you guess the letter 'S'. The computer looks for words which don't contain either an 'N' or an 'S'. Since there are plenty of these, the computer once again tells you your guess is wrong.

Eventually, the computer will not be able to find a word that doesn't contain any of your guesses, so it'll have to pick a word from the dictionary. Even now, the computer can cheat a little bit, because when you make your next guess, the computer will look to see if there is a different word which contains the previous guess in all the right places, but does not contain the new guess.

The result is a very challenging game of hangman, but there are tricks you can use to defeat the game. Good luck!

By the way, the reason this game is slower than The Real Hangman Game is that in order to cheat, the website server has to be consulted every time you guess.