Abstract
Hangman is one of the most widely-known word games in the world. In this note, we give a brute-force strategy for playing Hangman perfectly, and discuss a practical implementation with many optimizations. We then show two simpler algorithms, which are vastly more computationally efficient and, in practice, have almost optimal behaviour. Finally, we discuss (1) some directions in which the speed of the optimal algorithm could be improved heuristically, and (2) further results which might be gathered.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.