Except of course that people don't guess randomly. If the object is to beat a computer (as in the article) that will work, but if the objective is to beat a human j..z isn't all that hard because there are only two words in the English language that match that pattern and only one of them is 'printable'.

That's only using the older variant of hangman where you start with the first and last letters. I think the article is pretty clearly discussing the more modern, "wheel of fortune" variety.

That's got to be a cultural thing, I've never even heard of wheels of fortune combined with hangman.

Here's the discussion from the last time this was posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601978