Hard to Guess Hanging with Friends Words (8 Letters)

I analyzed all the words in the Hanging with Friends dictionary to determine which words I think are the hardest to guess. I included a rating of each word in my Hanging with Friends Word Builder. Most words are rated 0 since they can be easily guessed using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver with or without using a lifeline.

Here are the words I determined to be the hardest to guess. I’m posting them in separate posts based on word size.

Zynga gives you the last vowel for free AND only 4 strikes to guess the remaining 7 letters. In hangman, 8 letter words are often easy to guess since there are so many letters you can sometimes just get lucky and guess a correct letter and get another clue. But Zynga’s strike rule is extremely punitive for 8 letter words. As a result, 8 letter words are extremely difficult to guess, IF you can pick a good word like the ones below.

You’ll note that we finally see an appearance of my top score I give to a word. There are three words tied for the honors of hardest to guess Hanging with Friends words

So here are my top 14 Eight Letter Hanging with Friends words.

word Score***
fuddling 100
puzzling 100
vuggiest 100
buggiest 76
burriest 76
cuttling 76
huddling 76
puckered 76
ruddiest 76
rumpling 76
shammers 76
shudders 76
thumbing 76
trucking 76

** The Score column lists my own rating (out of 100) at how hard this word is to guess. I can’t tell you how I determined what that number is–it’s my own secret recipe but it involves some math! This isn’t the points you’d earn.You can’t cheat using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver to guess these words. You’ll have to be more clever.

 

Hard to Guess Hanging with Friends Words (7 Letters)

I analyzed all the words in the Hanging with Friends dictionary to determine which words I think are the hardest to guess. I included a rating of each word in my Hanging with Friends Word Builder. Most words are rated 0 since they can be easily guessed using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver with or without using a lifeline.

Here are the words I determined to be the hardest to guess. I’m posting them in separate posts based on word size.

Zynga gives you the last vowel for free AND 5 strikes to guess the remaining 6 letters

So here are my top 12 Seven Letter Hanging with Friends words.

word Score***
bucking 96
jazzing 96
yucking 96
buzzing 81
ducking 81
fulling 81
huffing 81
jelling 81
mucking 81
waxwing 81
yeuking 81
yukking 81

** The Score column lists my own rating (out of 100) at how hard this word is to guess. I can’t tell you how I determined what that number is–it’s my own secret recipe but it involves some math! This isn’t the points you’d earn.You can’t cheat using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver to guess these words. You’ll have to be more clever.

 

Hard to Guess Hanging with Friends Words (6 Letters)

I analyzed all the words in the Hanging with Friends dictionary to determine which words I think are the hardest to guess. I included a rating of each word in my Hanging with Friends Word Builder. Most words are rated 0 since they can be easily guessed using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver with or without using a lifeline.

Here are the words I determined to be the hardest to guess. I’m posting them in separate posts based on word size.

Zynga gives you the last vowel for free AND 6 strikes to guess the remaining 5 letters

So here are my top 9 Six Letter Hanging with Friends words.

word Score***
waived 84
baking 70
buzzed 70
jazzed 70
jogged 70
joking 70
jugged 70
willed 70
yucked 70

 
** The Score column lists my own rating (out of 100) at how hard this word is to guess. I can’t tell you how I determined what that number is–it’s my own secret recipe but it involves some math! This isn’t the points you’d earn.You can’t cheat using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver to guess these words. You’ll have to be more clever.

 

Hard to Guess Hanging with Friends Words (5 Letters)

I analyzed all the words in the Hanging with Friends dictionary to determine which words I think are the hardest to guess. I included a rating of each word in my Hanging with Friends Word Builder. Most words are rated 0 since they can be easily guessed using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver with or without using a lifeline.

Here are the words I determined to be the hardest to guess. I’m posting them in separate posts based on word size.

Zynga gives you the last vowel for free AND 7 strikes to guess the remaining 4 letters

So here are my top 26 Five Letter Hanging with Friends words.

word Score***
fazes 82
baked 68
cited 68
japes 68
waves 68
yowes 68
zaxes 68
babes 55
bayed 55
coxes 55
faves 55
foxed 55
foxes 55
fykes 55
hajes 55
hazed 55
hiker 55
howes 55
jakes 55
jiver 55
joker 55
jokes 55
joyed 55
piped 55
waxes 55
wizes 55

You can’t cheat using my  Hanging with Friends Word Solver  to guess these words. You’ll have to be more clever.

** The Score column lists my own rating (out of 100) at how hard this word is to guess. I can’t tell you how I determined what that number is–it’s my own secret recipe but it involves some math! This isn’t the points you’d earn.

 

Hard to Guess Hanging with Friends Words (4 Letters)

I analyzed all the words in the Hanging with Friends dictionary to determine which words I think are the hardest to guess. I included a rating of each word in my Hanging with Friends Word Builder. Most words are rated 0 since they can be easily guessed using my Hanging with Friends Word Solver with or without using a lifeline.

Here are the words I determined to be the hardest to guess. I’m posting them in separate posts based on word size.

In hangman, 4 letter words are usually harder to guess than longer words. But since Zynga gives you the last vowel for free AND 8 strikes to guess the remaining 3 letters, they actually often become quite easy to guess. And of course you can always use 9 strikes with the Revive lifeline or narrow it more with the 4 Suspects lifeline.

So here are my top 12 Four Letter Hanging with Friends words.

word Score**
kafs 73
fyke 59
hawk 59
jake 59
jape 59
jars 59
joke 59
lacs 59
mice 59
mime 59
wave 59
wite 59

You can’t cheat using my  Hanging with Friends Word Solver  to guess these words. You’ll have to be more clever.

** The Score column lists my own rating (out of 100) at how hard this word is to guess. I can’t tell you how I determined what that number is–it’s my own secret recipe but it involves some math! This isn’t the points you’d earn.

 

iOS 4.0.9 TW Bonus Frequency (Is DL the new TW?)

After the recent iOS 4.0.9 update, many people took to Facebook to complain that the TW bonus was becoming scarcer than before. Formerly, this was the most common bonus people received. Many speculated this was a decision made by Zynga since the Hanging with Friends Coin Store opened, and it now allows coin purchases with cash. I wasn’t concerned about the why as much as determining if it is true. That’s where my site has some good value since I’ve got lots of hard core stats to use for such questions.

The 4.0.9 hit the iOS app store on 10/13.  For the data I have collected below after 10/15, there’s no guarantee that the data is ALL from an iOS device with 4.0.9 installed, but you’ll see that there’s a really big change in the tw regardless. One should note this is just a small sample in the wide world of Hanging with Friends, but I think it’s big enough to make some casual observations.

Here are the details in a nice data table (or four!).

Distribution of 1,157 Games on or after 10/8/2011, but before 10/12/2011. This is BEFORE 4.0.9 update released.
Location 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total
dw 1.0% 0.9% 0.8% 1.8% 2.3% 2.7% 3.5% 2.9% 16.0%
dl 1.3% 0.9% 1.6% 4.3% 3.4% 3.5% 5.4% 4.7% 25.1%
tw 3.2% 1.2% 2.5% 4.7% 5.4% 4.8% 8.0% 7.8% 37.4%
tl 0.6% 1.3% 1.6% 2.9% 3.4% 3.2% 3.7% 4.8% 21.5%
Total 6.1% 4.2% 6.5% 13.7% 14.4% 14.2% 20.7% 20.2% 100.0%

Compare the above table to what seems to be happening after the update.

Distribution of 1,445 Games on or after 10/15/2011, but before 10/19/2011. This is AFTER 4.0.9 update released.
Location 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total Change
dw 0.8% 0.5% 1.0% 1.5% 2.0% 2.0% 3.1% 2.0% 12.9%
dl 1.9% 2.8% 2.1% 4.0% 5.8% 4.1% 8.2% 5.7% 34.6%
+
tw 1.5% 1.0% 1.5% 2.7% 2.0% 2.6% 3.5% 4.1% 18.7%
tl 1.9% 2.1% 2.2% 4.3% 4.4% 3.5% 6.9% 8.5% 33.8%
+
Total 6.0% 6.4% 6.7% 12.5% 14.3% 12.2% 21.7% 20.3% 100.0%

It certainly looks like TW (the highest) took a dive and DL (the lowest) took over the lead. The TL also got a boost, while DW took a dive. There doesn’t seem to be any significant change in bonus placement, however.

So is this a conspiracy to buy more coins with cash? Well let’s see how this plays out with coin accumulation.

My Word Builder/Word Generator always finds the highest points word possible for a given set of letters and bonus. If someone always picks the highest points words (never mind that you’ll probably lose because they are likely also easier to guess!), what would happen? Using the same sample I used for the above calculations, here’s how many points and coins you would earn.

Maximum Possible Points and Coin Accumulation for 1,157 Games on or after 10/8/2011, but before 10/12/2011. This is BEFORE 4.0.9 update released.
Total Top Points
40,463
Coins
4,046.3
Words Per Coin
0.285940242
Words Per 1000 Coins
285.9402417

And here’s the after update.

Maximum Possible Points and Coin Accumulation for 1,445 Games on or after 10/15/2011, but before 10/19/2011. This is AFTER 4.0.9 update released.
Total Top Points
43,344
Coins
4,334.4
Words Per Coin
0.333379476
Words Per 1000 Coins
333.3794758

The upshot seems to be there’s now a 14.2% tax on coins. That is, you’ve got to play about 14.2% longer to earn 1,000 coins (or any number of coins) than before the 4.0.9 iOS update.

Conspiracy for cash? That’s for you to decide. But personally I like Zynga, and I think they’re good guys (and gals). But it is a business trying to earn a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they likely won’t keep the game going for you to play. But you can still just play longer and keep your cash.

Hanging with Friends Bonus Tiles

 

 Updated: Check out a final word from Zynga.

Highest Points Hanging with Friends Words (You won’t ever make them!)

In Hanging with Friends, you are limited to the words you can make based on the words you are given. A fun fact I was able to calculate is that the highest point word possible in my dictionary is ZYZZYVAS. If you get the letters to make this word AND a triple word bonus, you’ll rack up 129 points. But if you were to pick that word, I guess it in only a few guesses. I’ll not even bother doing a real calculation of the probability of being able to make that word, since I’m pretty sure getting 3 Zs in Hanging with Friends is pretty much impossible.

The rest of the top highest points Hanging with Friends words are listed below. But don’t count on being able to play many of them anytime soon, since they require pretty rare occurences.

Word MaxPoints
zyzzyvas 129
zyzzyva 126
jazzlike 120
pizazzy 117
quizzing 117
zizzling 117
bezazzes 114
jazzman 114
jazzmen 114
pazazzes 114
pizazzes 114
jazzily 111
jazzing 111
bezazz 108
pazazz 108
pizazz 108
quizzed 108
quizzers 108
zizzled 108
buzzwigs 105
jazziest 105
quizzer 105
quizzes 105
zizzles 105

The highest points word I recall playing is JAROVIZE for 90 points. What’s your highest points Hanging with Friends word?

Picking words for high points isn’t often the same as picking words that are hard to guess. Do you want points or do you want to win Hanging with Friends? I want both, and that’s often the conflict in Hanging with Friends.

Basics about my Hanging with Friends dictionary

The actual Hanging with Friends dictionary is not published online (that I could find). But Zynga bases their dictionary on the widely available Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon (ENABLE). I downloaded it from here. The ENABLE word list I downloaded consists of 172,820 words. But Hanging with Friends restricts their word list to only words with 4,5,6,7 or 8 letters. This narrows the dictionary significantly. In addition, according to Zynga’s Words with Friends rule book,

Words With Friends has more than 173,000 acceptable words for use in the game. Our list is based on the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon (ENABLE), a public domain list used by many word games. Tap here to visit the site where the original ENABLE list resides. We’ve added a few of our own words to game such as ‘zen’ and ‘texting,’ and more words may be added in the future. If you’d like to suggest a word, you can do that here.

I don’t have access to the exact list of words they added. I hunted around the internets and added a few more words from wordlists I found. They additionally state they have removed, “derogatory words and racial slurs.” I did a quick google search to try to find a list of these types of words to remove from my list. But I didn’t find a comprehensive list. As a result, I left all the bad words in my dictionary. Perhaps, I should have looked harder since in an upcoming post on the “hardest words” to guess, I’ll have to get out my red pen and censor my own post!

My end result is a dictionary of 82,555 words. Here’s the first look, of many, at some statistics about these words.

Length Number
4 4,031
5 8,939
6 15,788
7 24,029
8 29,768

And here’s a histogram (a histogram is a fancy word for bar graph. We mathematicians like to use fancy words. Did I mention I’m a mathematician? Well, now you know.

Word Length Distribution

Here are a few additional fast facts about the letter distributions in my dictionary. Some of these may turn out to be quite useful for our later discussions.

Letter Words
Containing
Total
Number
Number in
WWF
a 38,256 45,266 9
b 11,656 12,848 2
c 18,507 20,204 2
d 20,612 23,059 5
e 51,126 65,991 13
f 7,554 8,584 2
g 14,834 16,572 3
h 13,146 13,681 4
i 36,667 42,143 8
j 1,438 1,466 1
k 7,734 8,095 1
l 27,451 31,354 4
m 14,733 15,980 2
n 28,777 32,487 5
o 28,959 34,348 8
p 14,932 16,539 2
q 1,009 1,009 1
r 35,460 40,412 6
s 42,659 52,497 5
t 28,045 32,164 7
u 19,344 20,578 4
v 5,180 5,347 2
w 6,483 6,657 2
x 1,827 1,837 1
y 9,999 10,253 2
z 2,218 2,523 1

 

What’s all this mean for your strategies when building and guessing words? Well that’s what we’re here to explore. And these statistics are only the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned.