Building a Hangman Word‑Guessing Game in Python

We start by outlining the overall design of a Hangman game: choose a secret word, let the player guess letters, reduce lives on wrong guesses, and end the game when the word is fully revealed or lives reach zero.

Import required libraries for random word selection and Jupyter output clearing:

from random import choice

from IPython.display import clear_output

Declare game variables – a list of possible words, the chosen word, an empty list to track previously guessed letters, a lives counter (7), and a boolean game_over flag:

words = ["tree", "basket", "chair", "paper", "python"]

word = choice(words)

guessed, lives, game_over = [], 7, False

Create a guesses list containing an underscore for each character in the secret word:

guesses = ["_ "] * len(word)

Main game loop runs while not game_over . Inside the loop we:

Print the current hidden word and remaining lives.

Prompt the player for input ( ans = input("Type quit or guess a letter: ").lower() ).

Clear previous output with clear_output() to keep the notebook tidy.

Check if the player typed quit and end the loop.

Validate the guess: if the letter has already been guessed, inform the player; if the guess is correct, reveal the letter(s) in guesses using a for i in range(len(word)) loop; otherwise decrement lives and notify the player.

Append new guesses to the guessed list.

When lives <= 0 , print a loss message and set game_over = True .

When "".join(guesses) == word , print a congratulatory message and set game_over = True .

The tutorial also explains the use of the special placeholder symbols (three squares) to indicate lines of code that will be inserted later, and emphasizes the importance of printing variable values for debugging.

By the end of the guide, readers have a fully functional Hangman program (~50 lines) that can be run in a Jupyter Notebook, illustrating fundamental Python concepts such as lists, loops, conditionals, and user interaction.