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Python Program for a Hangman Game

Intermediate · Games and random numbers

In hangman, one player thinks of a word and the other guesses it one letter at a time. Each wrong letter costs a life, and the guesser wins by finding every letter before the lives run out. This program plays a whole game from a list of guesses and shows the word, with blanks, after every turn.

Program

hangman.py
secret = "python"
lives = 6
guessed = []
# The letters the player tries, in order. To play for real, ask each turn:
# guess = input("Guess a letter: ").lower()
guesses = ["e", "o", "a", "t", "o", "s", "p", "n", "y", "h"]
for guess in guesses:
if guess in guessed:
print(f"'{guess}' was already tried")
continue
guessed.append(guess)
if guess in secret:
print(f"'{guess}' is in the word!")
else:
lives -= 1
print(f"'{guess}' is not in the word, lives left: {lives}")
shown = ""
for letter in secret: # found letters, and _ for the rest
if letter in guessed:
shown += letter + " "
else:
shown += "_ "
print("Word:", shown)
if "_" not in shown:
print("You win! The word was", secret)
break
if lives == 0:
print("Out of lives! The word was", secret)
break
Output
'e' is not in the word, lives left: 5
Word: _ _ _ _ _ _ 
'o' is in the word!
Word: _ _ _ _ o _ 
'a' is not in the word, lives left: 4
Word: _ _ _ _ o _ 
't' is in the word!
Word: _ _ t _ o _ 
'o' was already tried
's' is not in the word, lives left: 3
Word: _ _ t _ o _ 
'p' is in the word!
Word: p _ t _ o _ 
'n' is in the word!
Word: p _ t _ o n 
'y' is in the word!
Word: p y t _ o n 
'h' is in the word!
Word: p y t h o n 
You win! The word was python

How it works

  1. secret is the word to guess, and guesses stands in for the letters a player would type, one per turn.
  2. Each new letter is added to guessed; a letter that was tried before is skipped, so the second "o" costs no life.
  3. A letter that is not in the word costs one life, from a starting total of 6.
  4. After every guess the word is shown with _ for each letter not found yet, by checking every letter of secret against guessed.
  5. The game ends in a win when no _ is left, or in a loss when lives reaches 0; here the player wins with 3 lives to spare.

Another way to write it

A losing game, using a set and a function

A losing game, using a set and a function
def masked(word, guessed):
return " ".join(ch if ch in guessed else "_" for ch in word)
secret = "banana"
guessed = set()
lives = 3
for guess in ["a", "e", "i", "o", "n"]:
guessed.add(guess)
if guess not in secret:
lives -= 1
print(f"Guess {guess}: {masked(secret, guessed)} lives: {lives}")
if lives == 0:
print("Game over! The word was", secret)
break
Output
Guess a: _ a _ a _ a   lives: 3
Guess e: _ a _ a _ a   lives: 2
Guess i: _ a _ a _ a   lives: 1
Guess o: _ a _ a _ a   lives: 0
Game over! The word was banana

A set is a natural fit for guessed letters, since each letter only needs to be stored once. With only 3 lives the player runs out before finding the b, so this game shows the losing end.

Try it yourself

Set lives to 3 and run the game again to see how it ends when the player runs out of lives.

Edit the program above and press Run, or open it in the full editor to save it and share it. To watch it run line by line, open it in the visualizer.

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