Rocks & Gems Hangman 💎

Guess the geology word before the mango drops. Rocks & Gems is the category for anyone who has ever come home with a pocket full of pebbles — a free, child-friendly hangman alternative you can play instantly in your browser. No gallows, no downloads, no logins: pick a difficulty and dig in, from the coal and clay a six-year-old knows to the minerals and rock types a geologist names on sight.

Every word the game can pick is on the Rocks & Gems word list, sorted by difficulty.

Geology words for every level

Rocks & Gems has three difficulty levels, so it works for young collectors and keen geologists alike:

• Easy — the things you can pick up, dig out or find at the seaside: coal, clay, flint, pearl, gravel.
• Medium — named rocks, the gemstones in a jeweller's window, and the layers of the Earth.
• Hard — the three families of rock, the minerals collectors prize, and the vocabulary of plate tectonics.

How to guess rock and gem words

Try -ite on a long Hard word. Malachite, hematite, pyrite, fluorite, tanzanite and kimberlite all end the same way — mineral names very often do. If the last three blanks are free, I, T and E are worth a guess.

-stone hides in the Medium tier. Sandstone, limestone and birthstone all end in S-T-O-N-E, so if a long Medium word ends in N-E, try S, T and O next.

E and A are the best vowels. Sedimentary, metamorphic, mineral, malachite — E and A turn up in most of these words, while U is rare.

Watch for spaces. Fool's gold, lapis lazuli, petrified wood, tectonic plates and cubic zirconia are two words each, so the gap gives away where one word ends.

Tricky rock and gem spellings to watch

• sedimentary — rock laid down in layers, like sandstone and limestone. It ends -ary, not -ery.
• igneous — rock made from cooled magma or lava. The -eous ending is the trap: not "ignious".
• metamorphic — rock changed by heat and pressure, as limestone becomes marble. Same root as a caterpillar's metamorphosis.
• lapis lazuli — the deep-blue stone ground into paint for centuries. Both words end in a vowel, and there's no Z in the first one.
• peridot — a green gem and August's birthstone. One R, and a T at the end.
• cubic zirconia — the man-made diamond lookalike. Not the same thing as zircon, a natural mineral.

The stories behind the words

• Amethyst comes from the Greek amethystos, "not drunk" — the ancient Greeks believed the purple stone protected against drunkenness.
• Diamond shares a root with "adamant": the Greek adamas, meaning unconquerable, for the hardest natural substance known.
• Pyrite — fool's gold — comes from the Greek for fire, because it throws sparks when struck against steel.
• Garnet is thought to come from the Latin for pomegranate: small red garnet crystals look like the fruit's seeds.
• Tanzanite was only discovered in the 1960s, and is named after Tanzania, the one country where it is mined.
• Pumice is the rock that floats — it is so full of gas bubbles from the volcano that it can drift on the sea.

Rocks & Gems Hangman for the classroom

Rocks is a Year 3 science topic in England's national curriculum — comparing and grouping rocks, how fossils form, and what soil is made of — and weathering and the rock cycle turn up again throughout primary and middle-school Earth science. This category puts that vocabulary into a game: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic, weathering, magma, soil. 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 or a spelling list to load the exact words the class is learning.

Questions

Is Rocks & Gems Hangman free?
Yes — completely free, with no account, no download and no ads during gameplay.

Where are ruby, emerald and sapphire?
They are answers in Colours — as are jade, amber and turquoise — so they are left out here to keep the two categories different.

What ages is this suitable for?
All ages. Easy words work for young children, while Hard words will challenge teenagers and adults too.

Can I play on a phone or tablet?
Yes. It works in any browser on any device, with nothing to install.

Play more: Rocks & Gems · Rocks & Gems word list · Nature · Dinosaurs · Science · For Teachers