Capital Cities Hangman 🌐

Every country has one — can you spell them? Capital Cities Hangman is the geography-quiz category in Hangmango, a free, child-friendly hangman alternative you can play instantly in your browser. No gallows, no downloads, no logins: just pick your difficulty and spell your way from Paris to Ouagadougou. (Looking for famous non-capitals? They live in the Cities category.)

Capitals for every level

Capital Cities Hangman has three difficulty levels, so it works for younger children and confident spellers alike:

• Easy — the famous European capitals plus Tokyo and Cairo — short, familiar names.
• Medium — capitals from every continent that you know but rarely write down.
• Hard — the great spelling challenges of world geography, from Ljubljana to Antananarivo.

How to guess capital cities

Treat them as names. Capitals are proper nouns from dozens of languages — everyday English spelling logic is a weak guide, so lean on geography knowledge instead.

Vowels dominate the Hard tier. Ulaanbaatar, Antananarivo and Ouagadougou are astonishingly vowel-heavy — A, O and U are strong early guesses on long words.

Look for repeating patterns. The AN-AN-AN of Antananarivo and OU-OU of Ouagadougou mean one confirmed letter often fills several blanks at once.

Length is a huge clue. A four-letter capital is Rome, Oslo or Lima; an eleven-letter one narrows to a handful of famous monsters.

Tricky capital spellings to watch

• Reykjavik — Iceland's capital — the KJ pairing exists almost nowhere else in English text.
• Ljubljana — Slovenia's capital — LJ appears twice, and neither looks possible to English eyes.
• Ouagadougou — Burkina Faso's capital — eleven letters, only two distinct consonants.
• Ulaanbaatar — Mongolia's capital — two double As, in a pattern no other famous word shares.
• Tegucigalpa — Honduras's capital — the soft/hard G switch trips nearly everyone.
• Nicosia — Cyprus's capital — deceptively short, with a C where an S sounds right.

The stories behind the words

• Copenhagen comes from Danish København, "merchants' harbour" — a trading port from the start.
• Nairobi takes its name from a Maasai phrase meaning "place of cool waters".
• Reykjavik is Old Norse for "smoky bay", after the steam rising from Iceland's hot springs.
• Kathmandu is named for the Kasthamandap, a famous wooden pavilion said to have been built from a single tree.
• Canberra is generally traced to a Ngunnawal word often translated as "meeting place" — fitting for a purpose-built capital.

Capital Cities Hangman for the classroom

Capitals are a geography-lesson classic, and this category doubles as a spelling test for the atlas — pupils who can point to Ljubljana on a map still have to spell it. It pairs naturally with the Countries category for a two-round quiz. There's no hanging imagery, so it's suitable for every classroom: wrong guesses simply make a mango drop, and there are no ads during play. Teachers can also use Set a word to load in whichever capital the class is studying.

Questions

Is Capital Cities Hangman free?
Yes — completely free, with no account, no download and no ads during gameplay.

What words are included?
National capitals from every continent across easy, medium and hard difficulty — all single-word names, since hangman blanks don't support spaces.

Why isn't Buenos Aires (or Mexico City) included?
Multi-word capitals need spaces, which the letter grid doesn't support — so the category sticks to single-word capitals.

How is this different from the Cities category?
Cities covers famous non-capitals — Sydney, Venice, Mumbai — while this category is capitals only. Between them they cover the atlas.

Play more: Capital Cities · Countries · Cities · US States · For Teachers