Ocean Hangman

Everything on this page lives in or beside the sea: fish like SARDINE and SNAPPER, shellfish such as MUSSEL and OYSTER, sea mammals from the ORCA to the NARWHAL, plus words like SEAWEED and LIGHTHOUSE.

The theme has favourite pieces of its own. FISH ends STARFISH, SWORDFISH and CUTTLEFISH; SEA begins SEAHORSE and SEAWEED. When a long word starts or ends with a gap of three or four letters, one of those pieces is a smart guess.

Short words need a different plan. COD, EEL and CLAM leave little to go on, so start with the vowels. An E that appears twice points straight at EEL.

Sea creatures come in families you can use. SHARK, STINGRAY and SWORDFISH all start with S, and so do SQUID, SHRIMP, SEAL and SPONGE, so S is often a safe early guess on this page. If it lands at the front of the word, you're already halfway there.

New creatures turn up every round. Try it on Hard for the real challenge: five wrong guesses and the cookie is gone.