Ghost — the Word Game, Solved
Play Ghost against a perfect opponent, and see the solve: 25 of the 26 opening letters lose, and the exception depends on your dictionary.
Add a letter. Do not finish a word of 4 letters or more, and do not say something no word begins with. The computer plays perfectly.
25 of the 26 opening letters lose
Ghost is finite and has no hidden information, so it can be solved outright by walking the dictionary as a tree. Over 273,493 words of four letters or more, the answer is lopsided: the player who speaks first loses from 25 of the 26 openings.
The single winner is a, and it wins by a line ending in aasvogel — a South African vulture.
Which means the answer depends on your dictionary — and that is the finding
A result balanced on one obscure bird is not a fact about English, so the same solve was run against six different dictionary settings:
| Dictionary | Words | Winning openings for the first player |
|---|---|---|
| Words of 4 letters or more | 273,493 | a |
| Words of 3 letters or more | 274,804 | none at all |
| Words of 5 letters or more | 267,965 | none at all |
| 4+, nothing over 10 letters | 191,649 | e |
| 4+, nothing over 8 letters | 114,544 | none at all |
| 4+, without aasvogel and its kin | 273,491 | none at all |
The winning letter moves, and half the time there is no winning letter at all. What does not move is the shape: the first player wins from at most one opening in twenty-six, whatever dictionary you hand it. Ghost is a second player’s game and it is not close.
Play with everyday words and the first player has no winning opening whatever. Allow the obscure ones and they get exactly one — which is a precise way of saying that arguing about whether a word counts is not pedantry in Ghost. It is the entire game.
You never run out of letters. You always finish a word.
The rules have two ways to lose and one of them never happens. Of the 32,657 positions with no legal letter available, every single one is a position where every remaining letter would complete a word. 0 are dead ends with nothing to play at all. So the “you cannot continue” rule is dead weight, and the real game is entirely about who is forced to finish the word — which also explains why perfect Ghost is so short: most losing openings are over at a four-letter word.
How to use
- Add a letter without completing a word of four letters or more.
- The string must stay the beginning of some real word.
- The computer plays perfectly, so treat every game as a puzzle.
- Compare the dictionary settings — they change who wins.
Frequently asked questions
What are the rules of Ghost?
Players take turns adding a letter to a growing string. The string must remain the beginning of some real word. You lose if your letter completes a word of four letters or more, or if you say something no word begins with.
Does the first or second player win at Ghost?
The second, overwhelmingly. Solved over 273,493 words of four letters or more, the player who speaks first loses from 25 of the 26 opening letters. Only "a" wins, by a line ending in aasvogel, a South African vulture.
Does the dictionary change who wins at Ghost?
Yes, and that is the interesting part. Counting words of three or more letters, or five or more, or dropping words over eight letters, the first player has no winning opening at all. Capping words at ten letters moves the winning opening from "a" to "e". What never changes is the shape: at most one opening in twenty-six wins.
Is arguing about whether a word counts just pedantry?
No — in Ghost it is the whole game. Whether the first player has any winning opening at all depends on whether your dictionary contains a handful of obscure words. Play with everyday vocabulary and the first player is simply lost.
How do you actually lose a game of Ghost?
By finishing a word, essentially always. Of the 32,657 positions with no legal letter available, every single one is a position where every remaining letter completes a word. Not one is a dead end with nothing to play, so the second losing rule never fires in practice.
How long does a perfect game of Ghost last?
Barely any time. Seventeen of the twenty-five losing openings are over at a four-letter word, which is the earliest the game can possibly end. Against perfect play there is very little game to play.
How is Ghost solved?
The dictionary is loaded as a tree of prefixes and every position is evaluated backwards from the dead ends. It is a finite game with no hidden information, so a full solve is exact rather than an estimate.
Does this send my words anywhere?
No. The dictionary is downloaded to your browser and everything runs there.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or stored.