Jotto is a logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

-oriented word game

Word game

Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...

 played with two players, a writing implement, and a piece of paper. Each player picks a secret word of five letters (that is in the dictionary, generally no proper nouns are allowed, and generally consisting of all different letters), and the object of the game is to correctly guess the other player's word first. Players take turns guessing and giving the number of Jots, or the number of letters that are in both the guessed 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 was invented in 1955 by Morton M. Rosenfeld and marketed by his New York-based Jotto Corp. In the 1970s, copyright passed to the Selchow and Righter

Selchow and Righter

Selchow and Righter was a 19th century Bay Shore, New York game manufacturer best known for the games Parcheesi and Scrabble.It dates back to 1867when it was founded as E.G. Selchow & Co...

 Company. It is now made by Endless Games

Endless Games

Endless Games is a games manufacturer based in South Amboy, New Jersey and founded in 1996 by industry veterans Mike Gasser, Kevin McNulty and game inventor Brian Turtle....

.

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 Master Mind', though its logical content places it well beyond Master Mind
  Mastermind (board game)
  Mastermind or Master Mind is a code-breaking game for two players. The modern game with pegs was invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert, but the game resembles an earlier pencil and paper game called bulls and cows that may date back a century or...
  
   and Jotto). Known to have been played with pencil and paper in UK
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
  
   computer
  Computer
  A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
  
   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
  Dictionary
  A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
  
  . The name of the same computer game is Sixicon by Island Software
  Island Software
  Island Software, at one time located in California, was a software company providing desktop productivity applications for Unix workstations.Island Office was an office productivity suite available on many Unix systems in the 1990s....
  
  , 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 created by Zachary Stern is available.
• Kane Jotto is a form of multi-player Jotto. Each player has a secret word, like the original game. Each round, a player guesses a word and each player goes around stating the number of letters his or her secret word has in common with the guess. The winner correctly guesses the secret words of all other players.
• Three-letter Jotto is played without using pencil and paper. In order that the game not be overly difficult, as it must be done entirely in the head, only perfect matches return a count.