Hanging men efficiently

• static variables are seldom the 'right' way to do things in Object Oriented languages like Java. Other than for constants, it is a red flag that something is wrong.

• you have a problem with generating random numbers... e.g. Math.round(Math.random() * 2) will, in fact, generate values of 0, 1, and 2, but it will generate the value '1' twice as many times as it generates the values 0 or 2. The 'right way' for doing random numbers is here on StackOverflow. In this case, you want to create a Random randgen = new Random() instance, and use the nextInt() instance method to get random numbers: randgen.nextInt(range) or, in your 0,1,2 example, you want randgen.nextInt(3);

• The code correctPhrase[x] = wordBank[(int) Math.round(Math.random() * 61)]; is ugly. The 61 is a 'magic number' and would be best to replace with wordBank.length. The normal mechanism for this line of code is: correctPhrase[x] = wordBank[randgen.nextInt(wordBank.length)]; (using the same randgen instance we created above.

• you do not convert the 'custom' input phrase to lowercase, which could result in issues, and you should validate that it only has 5 words... otherwise in the next piece of code you could gt an indexout-of-bounds exception when creating the underscore version.

• getGuess() appears to be fine.

• checkGuess() is ugly because of the static variables again, and, in fact, the code is essentially a subset of the updateGuess() method. checkGuess() can be completely removed.... I will describe how, in a moment.

• the drawBoard() method has lots of code and constant repetition. I would find a way to put a 'blank' board in an array of values (one per line), and then copy that array for each 'totalWrong, but adjust the lines where needed. Then, you can just loop through the lines that are relevant for your 'totalWrong' state (i.e. remove most of the code duplication).

• the goAgain() method suddenly has GUI components... odd...

• the main() method appears to be straight-forward enough, but would change a lot if you do what I suggest below:

public static boolean guess(char guess) {
    // Define char array from currentGuess for alerting
    char[][] currentGuessArray = new char[currentGuessPhrase.length][];
    for (int x = 0; x < currentGuessPhrase.length; x++) {
        currentGuessArray[x] = currentGuessPhrase[x].toCharArray();
    }

    boolean goodguess = false;
    //Assign valid values of guess to currentGuessArray
    for (int x = 0; x < correctPhrase.length; x++) {
        for (int a = 0; a < correctPhrase[x].length(); a++) {
            if (correctPhrase[x].charAt(a) == guess) {
                currentGuessArray[x][a] = guess;
                goodguess = true;
            }
        }
    }
    // Convert chars back to string array
    for (int x = 0; x < currentGuessArray.length; x++) {
        currentGuessPhrase[x] = new String(currentGuessArray[x]);
    }
    return goodguess;
}

if (!guess(guess)) {
        totalWrong++;
    }

public static final void main (String[] args) {
    do {
        String phrase = getPhrase();
        Hangman game = new HangMan(phrase);
        game.play();
    } while (goAgain());
}

public class Hangman {
     private final String[] correctPhrase = new String[5];
     private final String[] currentGuessPhrase = new String[5];
     private final char[] currentGuesses = new char[26];
     private int totalWrong = 0;
     private int totalGuesses = 0;

     ... and lots of code to make the game work....

}