Toward that end, here's an effort from 2001: http://www.sharkfeeder.com/hangman/. I wonder if a modern computer runs much faster than the reported 15 hours on a P3/600 -- let's hope it does. Perhaps this can be used to push the search deeper than choosing one of the 4 most likely letters at each junction, though for each one-letter increase I imagine there's a pretty steep runtime increase.