A Brief History of Hangman

Going to try something new here. Typically, when the first video game comes out based on a real-world game or concept, I would include a short history of that game/concept within the same article. Here, I'd like to try something different and separate the history of the source from the digital interpretation.

With the Game of Hangman article having just released, the traditional pen-and-paper game of Hangman is a perfectly suitable choice to begin this little foray into the broader world of games. I'll keep the format quite simple on these: origins of the game, the earliest video game attempts, and the state of the game in current day.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

The History of Hand-Drawn Executions

While Hangman is a now-ubiquitous little game played by likely every child who ever attended school over the past 100-120 years, there's no concrete answer on where exactly the game came from. Ah, the historian's worst nightmare: obscure and uncertain origins.

There is a mythical origin story of the game floating around the internet, the origins of which I'm uncertain of. No credible sources are around to support this story, which dates back to 17th century Europe and real hangings. A prisoner would be set up on the gallows, over a five-legged stand - the legs representing the number of guesses the prisoner had at guessing a word set by their executioner before their life would be snuffed out. If the prisoner guessed the word correctly, they'd be set free. This real life practice was then somehow, somewhere, immortalised in a pen-and-paper children's game. Great fun for all the family!

More realistically, it seems that Hangman's origins can be somewhat traced back to the Victorian-era Great Britain. Variants of the game would be regularly presented in educational publications in the mid-late 19th century. One of the more commonly known early examples of a Hangman-type game comes from an 1894 book entitled The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland, compiled by Alice Bertha Gomme. The variant in this book forgoes the gallows, and is instead called Birds, Beasts and Fishes. Functionally it's very similar, but focuses on the titular animals, and makes it a little easier (it's a children's game, after all) by starting the words off with the first and last letters being given. This variant being included in a "Traditional Games" type of book suggests that word-guessing games along these lines had already been around for quite some time - my guess would be multiple generations, at least.

It made its way across the Atlantic by the start of the 20th century, as reported in an... interesting article, shall we say, published by The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1902. Just look up "White Cap Party", and you'll see what I mean. From that point onward, the game of Hangman appears to have stabilised into the form everyone knows it as today. Some have taken it upon themselves to devise less violent / implicitly racist (or so they claim) forms of the game in more recent years, but I'll save that discussion for the current-day state of the game later in this article.

Digital Dule Trees

As we already know from my Game of Hangman article, the origins of video game adaptations of Hangman date back well into the 1970s. Game of Hangman isn't the first one, however. There's at least one known game that pre-dates Ken Aupperle's take on the word-guessing game, dating back to 1970. I actually spent some time fiddling around with a PDP-10 emulator, and was able to get the game running! This version, whose author is unknown, plays like conventional Hangman, however the way it draws the gallows is opposite to convention. The picture of the hanging man begins fully drawn, with each incorrect guess (9 total) erasing a part of the picture, until it disappears entirely. Unusual, but the end result is functionally the same. The ASCII drawing of the hangman is also quite detailed - impressive for the time. Expect a full article dedicated this Hangman game in the future.

Aupperle's game in action.

Ken Aupperle's is likely the second Hangman video game. This, as we've already seen, plays by the conventional rules. Aupperle's drawing of the hangman is far less detailed, but he does come up with some very creative words to guess. I won't go into much more detail on this game, as I've already given it a full article, so check that post out to get all the details.

Skipping a few years forward over other early computer takes, it's the first generation of home computers, and second generation of home consoles where Hangman really gets its time in the video game spotlight. Just about every home computer and console had their own version of Hangman, most fairly early on in the generation's lifespan, too. This was still around the time where the home console developers were trying to pitch their devices as more than just entertainment devices - they could also be used for fun education, so they claimed. Consoles like the Atari 2600 and Fairchild Channel F heavily leaned into educational titles early on, of which Hangman was one, both consoles releasing their takes on the game in 1978. On the computer side of things, innovation took place pretty quickly, as developers on the Apple II came out with a series of multilingual Hangman games, beginning with 1978's The Spanish Hangman. Later, there would be German, French, Russian, and even Latin versions, all giving the twist of making the player translate words and even phrases from one language into another.

How... inquisitive.

The development of Hangman video games drops off quite significantly after the late 1970s - early 1980s. I would hazard a guess that this drop off is a fairly natural effect of the increasing proficiency and creativity of game developers, making Hangman not a terribly interesting type of game to make. There were still some rather curious takes on the formula, such as 1994's sci-fi Effacer: Hangman from the 25th Century, released for that most dreaded of consoles: the Philips CD-i. There were some later Flash and handheld console takes on Hangman, but interest in making Hangman video games has almost died out in the 21st century.

If this is what Hangman looks like in the 25th century,
I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

Modern Mock Trials

Hangman in all its forms continue to be played with regularity in the 21st century, yet not without controversy and the nature of our times affecting the way the game is perceived. Our sensitive-to-offense, obsessed-with-political-correctness culture in the West had led to many to rethink how to present Hangman without the perceived sinister undertones present in its original form. On one hand, this does make sense, as having a children's game feature an antiquated form of capital punishment is maybe not the best idea in the world. One could argue this mindset has been present since Gomme's Traditional Games book, with that variant entirely removing the gallows. Modern attempts to "clean up" the game feature a different kind of drawing being made, like a snowman, or other various activities not involving death. In the complete opposite direction, our culture also seems to love death and the grotesque, so attempts have been made to make Hangman even more violent, like in the case of the 2007 flash game Hangman Extreme.

Just in case you though regular Hangman was a bit dull,
Hangman Extreme has you covered.

On the other hand, this obsession with "cleaning up" Hangman's image can go to far into the realms of historical anachronism. One blog I read during my research equated the premise of Hangman with a lynching of all things. My professional opinion on this is that I can see how that association could be made by certain quarters of the United States. Although, I think that the historical evidence would prove without a shadow of a doubt that Hangman is a game definitely not about that hideous and awful practice. First, the game originated in Britain, not America, where the practice was totally foreign. Secondly - if the mythical origins of Hangman are to be believed - the game had a purpose completely dissociated from 19th to early 20th century American culture. People can repurpose things for nefarious purposes all the time - but that doesn't mean that the thing itself is inherently immoral. 

My personal opinion is that it's literally a game about guessing words, for crying out loud. Get over yourself. There's no big conspiracy here.

To utilise Ockham's Razor here, the simplest explanation for the origin of Hangman is likely that it comes from a time where public executions by hanging were a normal part of life, and that always weaves itself into the culture of the day. The image of hanging probably got worked into educational exercises as a familiar visual aid for students. It doesn't mean that it was a bad or good thing, that's what the culture was like at the time Hangman likely originated.

Any Last Words?

Just to quickly follow on from the last paragraph, and to provide some perspective. My job, as a historian, is simply to find out the facts and present them within the context of the culture in which they originated, while correcting any misconceptions that inevitably come from our temporal displacement from said culture. The historian isn't here to be a sort of "morality police," or to tell you, "people in the past were savages, weren't they?" Even our culture and generation has its own vices that future generations will call us savages for. We should never think that we're the generation that's "made it." Else we risk the folly of repeating the errors our forefathers made.

On a more personal note - for what it's worth, Hangman is a game I played regularly through school, and I thought nothing of it. It was just a game, and a fun one when you're in primary (elementary) school. Whether I knew what hanging was a concept at the time, I can't remember. But I don't think it matters. It didn't affect my perception of life, that I know for sure.

If you happen to be a teacher or educator reading this, and the very concept of Hangman still bothers you - change it. You are free to switch it out with something else. I've no right to judge. All I want us to know is the proper historical context.

Next up: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.