Page #25
Released
I don't have much to say about this page, but I've got quite a bit to say about the game of hangman.
Lately I've been thinking about the game, particularly in regards strategic word choice. My conclusion is that one effective strategy may involve two-letter words. As the player choosing the word, it is in your best interest to exhaust your opponent of all their guesses. On their end, they'll seek to get one letter, cluing them into what the second may be. But the thing is, the longer a word is, it seems that the more likely it is to contain certain letters, particularly ones known to be common. For example, most words contain either a, e, i, o, or u; so many opponents may do one of those early on, and use their first successful guess as a heuristic to hint at what other letters may be. But the shorter a word is, the fewer letters it has which may match common guesses, and therefore, the less likely it is for your opponent to easily make successful guesses for the first letter. Therefore, to even get the first letter in a two-letter word, an opponent may exhaust more guesses to get their first letter than with a longer word. Now, most words, after the first letter is found, technically have a wider domain of possible words than a two-letter word would. In fact, after the first letter in a two-letter word is found, it's a simple matter to go through every letter of the alphabet and figure out every possible word the result could be. But the problem for the guesser is that none of their guesses will provide them with any information which will bring them closer to the answer; their only option is to keep guessing, and with all the guesses they expended to get to the first letter, they can only choose so many from each possible word. It takes the skill out of the game, and turns it more into a matter of probability.
If we assume a hangman game of six guesses (head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg), and if we assume they get lucky and guess one of the letters at the start, making it easy to go through the alphabet and determine every possible word the result could be, I suspect that in most cases there are still more words available than they have guesses. If it takes them several guesses to figure out the first letter, which is likely the case, the number of possible words compared to the number of guesses they have is distanced further still.
And if you consider there are two-letter words which consist of rare early guesses, such as "my", you may be able to utilize these effects to their maximum potential. If, as the hangman, you choose a word with uncommon letters such as "my", "qi", or "ox"; and your opponent knows you would do this sort of thing, that just may give them the insight to use uncommon letters before common ones. However, if you expect them to expect this of you, you could go with a word like "at", which has two very common letters, and they would be guessing uncommon letters because that's what they expect of you. The hangman metagame goes from being a game of skill, to one of probability, then to one of expectations of your opponent.
This brings the question: are two-letter words damaging to a healthy, competitive hangman metagame? In sanctioned hangman tournaments, do we ban two-letter words due to taking the skill out of the game; or do we keep them because they require the skill of understanding your opponent? Suppose that during the International Hangman League, a particular player overcomes many opponents. The entire record would be easily accessible to the public. A prospective opponent could look up and study the style of their word choices and letter guessing techniques, and this would add a new level of strategy and skill to the game. As such, a player could gain a reputation for using two-letter words
This may self-regulate two-letter words in sanctioned hangman play, as a player who too often employs the use of two-letter words will become known for this strategy, and other players may be able to study their patterns in advance and develop a counterstrategy. Of course, this may depend on the rules of sanctioned hangman. Suppose that you have a pool of all words, and as players use them, those words are phased out for a period of time. Thus, words with very uncommon letter combinations may be quickly phased out, and if players know those words are being phased in soon, they may anticipate their opponents will snatch them up, especially if those opponents have a history of doing so. Furthermore, if two-letter words are an appealing strategy, players may use them quickly, and thus they would become phased out, making the word pool of available two-letter words shrink, reducing the strategic advantages they may have, as an opponent could rule out unavailable words. Where I see two-letter words being an issue for a sanctioned hangman format, is if the opposite of such ideas are used, and it is unknown who your opponent is and if the word pool is limited.
At least, these are my two cents on the matter.