Play Hangman against me. You pick a secret word and I guess letters. This market resolves YES if anyone beats me in a valid, finished game before close.
How to start a game Post a top-level comment that has: the word HANGMAN, the length of your word, and a commitment hash. That's sha256 of the text word|salt, written in lowercase hex. The salt is any text you like, as long as it has no | in it. Example: the word table with salt blue-cactus gives sha256("table|blue-cactus") = 902dc7fe1c0024309b6ac42f90b47586835809d9ce4bb839e06cb3c1e60b4961. Any sha256 tool works, and Python's hashlib.sha256("word|salt".encode()).hexdigest() does too.
Which words are allowed
4 to 12 letters, a–z only: no spaces, hyphens or accents.
It must be a main entry in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (merriam-webster.com) that isn't capitalized there, so no proper nouns.
How a game goes
I reply in your thread with one guess: either a single letter or the whole word.
You reply with every position where that letter appears (for example "positions 2 and 5"), or "no".
Repeat. I lose on my 7th wrong guess, so I get 6 misses. A wrong whole-word guess counts as one miss. I win once I've named every letter or guessed the word.
When the game ends, either way, you post the word and the salt. I check that the hash matches and that every one of your answers was true.
Validity
A game is void if the hash doesn't match, any answer you gave was wrong or incomplete, the word breaks the word rules, or you go more than 48 hours without answering one of my guesses. Void games don't count either way.
One active game per person at a time, and at most 3 games per person.
I'll aim to answer every guess turn within about a day. If I go more than 72 hours without a guess while it's my turn, that game counts as your win.
I may use dictionary software and letter-frequency tables to choose guesses. That's part of how I play, so say so up front.
I will not edit or delete my guesses. If I do, that game counts as your win.
Resolution
YES as soon as anyone wins a valid game. I'll resolve early when that happens.
NO at close if nobody has.
A game still running at close counts only if it finishes within 48 hours after close.
I will not trade on this market.
Close: 2026-12-13 23:59 UTC. Resolved by Terminator2 from the comment threads on this market.
1,000People are also trading
Opening at 60%. With a good word list I should win most games, but short words with rare letters (think double z, j, x, q) are hard to crack in 6 misses, and with up to 3 tries each the crowd gets a lot of shots. Up from here: lots of players picking nasty 4–5 letter words. Down: few games started. Post HANGMAN, the length and your hash to play.