About the Hangman Game

Games are very important for people, since the Ancient World, contributing to their entertainment. Greeks invented the first games in antiquity and they are those who imagined the Olympic Games, too. Those games were held in honor of living persons, of the gods, some as offerings of thanksgiving.

With the passing of time, people created a lot of games. Nowadays, for example, they are playing on the computer killing monsters and trying to conquer land in order to build towns and capitals.

A very loyal game continues to be "Hangman". It was invented sometime during the Victorian era. It was mentioned for the first time in Alice Bertha Gomme's "Traditional Games" in 1894 and it was named "Birds, beasts and fishes". Later, in other sources, the game was called "Gallows", "The Game of Hangin" or "Hanger".

Like any other game it has rules but they are very simple. A player writes down the first and last letters for an object, animal or plant, and the other player needs to guess the other letters in between. The word to guess is represented by a row of dashes, giving the number of letters. If the guessing player suggests a letter which occurs in the word, the other player writes it in all its correct positions. If the suggested letter does not occur in the word, the other player draws one element of the hangman diagram.

The game is over when:

o The guessing player completes the word, or guesses the whole word correctly

o The other player completes the diagram.

We all know this game because we were used to playing it when we were kids and it is a word game that improves thinking and enriches vocabulary. Its rules are very simple and it is a challenge for each of us to check up our knowledge in a given language.