Lesson 5.3: Hangman Pt. 2 – Error Handling

Today’s Goals

• Make Hangman more user-friendly
• Add error handling with try/except
• Prevent the game from crashing on bad input

Warm-Up Question

• What happens if the user types a number instead of a letter?
• Or if they type more than one letter?

The Problem

word = "python"
guess = input("Guess a letter: ")

if guess.isalpha() and len(guess) == 1:
    print("Valid guess!")
else:
    print("Invalid input!")

Class Practice

• Run this code
• Try entering numbers or multiple letters
• Why is .isalpha() helpful?

Using try/except

try:
    number = int(input("Enter a number: "))
    print("You typed:", number)
except ValueError:
    print("That was not a number!")

Applying to Hangman

• Catch errors so the game doesn’t crash
• Require a single alphabetical character
• Give feedback if the input is invalid

Student Challenge

• Add input checking to your Hangman game
• The program should:
  • Accept only single letters
  • Reject numbers and empty input
  • Print a helpful error message

Wrap-Up

• Error handling makes games smoother
• Next time: We’ll play full Hangman together!