Jotto (sometimes Giotto) is a logic-oriented word game played with two players, a writing implement, and a piece of paper. Each player picks a secret word of five letters, and the object of the game is to correctly guess the other player's word. Players take turns guessing and giving the number of Jots, or the number of letters that are in both the test word and the secret word. The positions of the letters don't matter: for example, if the secret word is OTHER and a player guesses PEACH, he gets a reply of 2 (for the E and the H, even though they're in the wrong positions). Using a written-out alphabet, players cross out letters that are eliminated with Jot counts of 0 and other logical deductions. History
Jotto invented in 1955 by Morton M. Rosenfeld and marketed by his New York-based Jotto Corp. In the 1970s, copyright passed to the Selchow & Righter Company. Variations
- The most common variation uses words of four letters instead of five.
- Players should agree before playing if secret words can contain duplicate letters.
- Six-Letter (sometimes called 'Word Mastermind', though its logical content places it well beyond Mastermind and Jotto). Known to have been played with pencil and paper in UK computer departments at least as far back as 1970. Each player picks a secret word of 6 letters, and they take turns guessing the other's word. Secret words (sometimes called 'targets') and guesses, must all be real words verifiable in a nominated dictionary. When you guess a word, you find out the # of letters which are perfect matches only. So if you guess PEACHY and the secret word was OTHERS, you get a reply of 0 (because the E and H are in the wrong positions). Even more so than Jotto, this game stretches one's skills in combinatorial logic as well as one's command of the dictionary. The name of the same computer game is Sixicon by Island Software, 1979.
- Five-Letter, like Jotto, requires players to take turns guessing at an opponent's five-letter word. Like Six-Letter, responses only indicate the number of perfect matches. If you guess PEACH and the secret word is PHIAL, the response would be 1 -- the P is an exact match, but the A and the H are not. A strong strategy for Five-Letter involves attacking the middle three positions (2, 3, and 4) with vowels.
- The television game show Lingo consists largely of contestants playing a variant of Jotto. In Lingo, the player is told which matching letters are in the correct position, and which are in incorrect positions. Instead of being selected by the contestants, the words are chosen by the show and contestants are given a limited number of guesses.
- A computer game version called Josho is available.
[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Jotto ]
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