Variable is undefined after adding a 'while statement' and list assignment index out of range

I am creating a Hangman guessing game/machine. I know it's been done a million times before but I'm just starting out in python so I'm trying to figure out how to do it without having the answer thrown in my face.

I had initially copied the code out 7 times, was going to continue with an if statement up to 11 but with my VBA experience I thought I would try make it semi-smart even if it is only version 1 by adding a while loop in. (Plan for v2 is to add a bit of intelligence in, possibly a dictionary to cross reference/calculate letter frequencies etc. but just a pipe dream until version 1 is finished)

Basically the code was working fine when it was repeating but once I added the while loop in it first failed due to lnG1 and pos not being defined. So I added a list to define the values as 0 or "" even though they are being overwritten.

import random
lcGuess = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z']
lnLife = 7
lcWord = 'a'
while (len(lcWord)!=5):
  try:
    lcWord = str(input("""Fancy a game of Hangman? Pick a 5 letter word, I have 7 wrong guesses to 
    try figure it out \n """))
  except:
    print('5 letter words only')

 lcClean = lcWord.lower()
 tokens = list(lcClean)
 maxVal = 25

 x = 1

 lnG1 = [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,]
 pos1 = ["","","","",""]
 pos2 = ["","","","",""]
 pos3 = ["","","","",""]
 pos4 = ["","","","",""]
 pos5 = ["","","","",""]
 maxChar = 0

while lnLife > 1:
  g = random.randint(0,maxVal)
  lnG1[x] = lcGuess[g]
  print('My 1st guess is ' + str(lnG1[x]))
  if lnG1[x] in tokens:
     print('I guessed right ' + lnG1[x] + ' is in your word \n')
     maxChar = lcClean.count(lnG1[x])
  if maxChar >= 1:
    pos1[x] = lcClean.find(lnG1[x])
  if maxChar >= 2:
    pos2[x] = lcClean.find(lnG1[x], pos1[x] + 1)
  if maxChar >= 3:
    pos3[x] = lcClean.find(lnG1[x], pos2[x] + 1)
  if maxChar >= 4:
    pos4[x] = lcClean.find(lnG1[x], pos3[x] + 1)
  if maxChar >= 5:
    pos5[x] = lcClean.find(lnG1[x], pos4[x] + 1)

  if lnG1[x] not in tokens:
    lnLife = lnLife - 1
    print('I guessed wrong ' + lnG1[x] + ' is not in your word, I have ' + 
    str(lnLife) + ' lives left 
    \n')

   del lcGuess[g]
   maxVal = maxVal - 1
   x = x + 1

So I thought the creating the list would fix it but now I am getting IndexError: list assignment index out of range at this line of code: pos1[x] = lcClean.find(lnG1[x]) Obviously don't get the error when all of the guesses are wrong.

The way I read it is pos1[1] should be = "" and is about to be replaced by the number of correct letters in the word

Apologies for how long winded this is. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!