Music Hangman

The words on this page come from the band room and the concert hall: strings like VIOLIN, VIOLA and MANDOLIN, brass such as TROMBONE and TUBA, percussion from the GONG to the XYLOPHONE, and a few words for how music is made, like ORCHESTRA and METRONOME.

Instrument names carry memorable letters. An O-heavy word could be OBOE or PICCOLO; a word with an X is almost certainly XYLOPHONE; a K points to UKULELE or GLOCKENSPIEL. Instruments that come from Italian often end in O or I, like PIANO and TIMPANI.

Short entries such as LUTE, LYRE and HARP are close cousins with similar letters, so each guess needs a little thought.

Musical terms bring in a few spellings from other languages as well. SITAR comes from India and MARIMBA from Africa, and both keep the vowels you'd expect to hear. Say the word out loud in your head once a few letters are showing; it often gives the rest away.

Every round picks a new word at random. Try Hard when you know your instruments well: five wrong guesses is all you get.