Hangman and Life's Complicated

Did you remember playing hangman? You had a few minutes of time at the end of class and your teacher lets you play a rousing game of hangman. I remember for me this mostly happened in church during Sunday School (the meeting in which LDS members study scriptural doctrine). Hangman was such a simple game. One person comes up with a word they draw a line for each letter of the word on the blackboard, draw the gallows, and then the remaining members of the class guess letters. If they guess incorrectly, part of the man on the gallows is drawn. The most complicated part of the game was if the person in charge of the word left out a letter or added an extra one in. Or maybe deciding if you were going to add the face all at one time or eye-by-eye.

Everyone says that life is more complicated nowadays. Well, hangman is proof. Nowadays hangman is much more complicated. Now the kids argue about what category the word should come from and when I chimed in with, "you don't need to have a category, just pick a random word," all chaos broke loose: "it's too hard if you don't know the category!" Too hard? Hangman? Puzzling. Not only is hangman too hard without divulging the category of the word, but you also get three hints. Hints mean that the person in charge of the word will give you three letters over the course of the guessing. I'm baffled. Hints and categories, eye-by-eye. Simplicity is gone, and the proof is in the man in the gallows.