by Bruce Whitehill
One of the best word games of all time is Jotto. So many people have never heard of it, and yet everyone who knows it loves it. Like Mallomars and egg creams. It’s “the secret word game” that you could play with a pencil and scrap paper, but it was so much nicer to have the official Jotto score sheet in its neat, vinyl case.
Jotto, 1972-73 (©1956-57), Selchow & Righter
The premise is simple: you have a “secret” five-letter word that your opponent tries to guess before you guess her secret word. The object is to figure out the letters in your opponent’s word by eliminating letters, and making educated guesses at letter combinations. You decide on a five-letter word to ask your opponent, and she tells you how many letters in the word you asked correspond with letters in her secret word. If she says “zero,” then you can eliminate all five letters from the alphabet printed at the bottom of your score sheet. And, for example, if you ask “quiet” and you’re told that one letter corresponds, and then you ask “quest,” and you’re told that two letters correspond, then you know that one letter is an “s” and that there is no “i.”
Sound familiar? Sure, it’s Mastermind with words, but it predates it by decades. Jotto was first produced in 1954 by the Jotto Company, and was then picked up by Selchow & Righter a year later. I’m not sure when it disappeared, but it was long before Selchow & Righter was sold to Coleco in 1986. Jotto was reintroduced in 1997 by Endless Games.
Jotto was invented by Morton M. Rosenfeld, who produced it himself under “The Jotto Corp.”; he advertised it on the Jack Paar and Mike Wallace shows around 1955. Morton’s wife said: “We played so much, we used to play in our heads.”
STRATEGY HINTS FOR JOTTO:
Choosing a secret word:
1. Find a word whose letters can be mixed up (an anagram) to spell another word (such as “stake,” “steak,” “takes,” “skate”); remember that your opponent must guess the word, not just the letters.
2. Use common letters that will appear in many words; this makes it more difficult for your opponent to eliminate letters.
3. Use double letters; your opponent must come up with a word that has the same double letter as in your word in order to be told that two letters correspond.
4. Use interesting combinations or placement of letters; “areas,” for example, is a great word with common letters, more vowels than usual, and a double letter.
5. Don’t try to use a word your opponent may not be familiar with. (Save that for the Dictionary game, and remember this is not Scrabble.)
Guessing your opponent’s word:
1. Ask words with odd letters or letter combinations, including double letters, that might score a zero, allowing you to eliminate all letters in that word; “quick” is a an example of a word that may have no letters corresponding to the secret word.
2. Don’t waste too many turns trying to find out about one letter, or trying to eliminate every letter not in your opponent’s secret word; ask words with all different letters, and then try different combinations of some of the letters. (One strategy is to use 20 different letters in the first four words you ask.)
3. After you’ve eliminated certain letters, use those letters in words when you want to minimize the possibility of corresponding letters. (For example, using “quill” when you’ve already eliminated “q” and “u” and you’re looking to see if there’s an “i” or and “l,” or both.)
4. Don’t be shy about using a word your opponent has used if the letter combinations seem right for you.
5. Try using words that have all common letters (maybe you’ll get a few corresponding all at once), or one that avoid the common letters (maybe you’ll get a zero). Common letters are “e,” “t,” “s,” “a,” “n.”
