Comments on: Weekend Word Wrap: Mental Jotto

By: Amy

Amy — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:04:03 +0000

KJ,

Exactly what I thought…. have to give a go, though , as I prefer words to colored pegs

This’ll be better than ‘Sinister Minister’!

By: Nan

Nan — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:39:11 +0000

I just started teaching my gifted fourth graders how to play Mastermind. I think I am going to introduce them to this they ar basically the same. Thanks for sharing!

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:22:23 +0000

I used to play this game during study period in high school. My favorite six letter Jotto word: oxygen.

By: Anonymoose

Anonymoose — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:15:11 +0000

I used to have computer game version of this in college that I loved…I always started with the word “frump” in the hopes that it would one day be the word. It happened once – I guessed in one try. Go frump!

I would love to find a computer version of this again – it would be a much better time waster than my Mastermind widget!

By: Kelli K.

Kelli K. — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:57:58 +0000

I have actually read your book! and this game baffled me then as it does now… I’m sure with enough practice I would get it, but I’ll stick with billboard ABCs on long trips for now. Great post!

By: mle

mle — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:36:04 +0000

I played Jotto in the elementary school in an academically gifted class (future mental_flossers?). I can’t remember what my teacher called it, but we would play it for a few minutes at the end of class if we had time. This meant one game could last weeks. When my teacher was “it” she would use the word AISLE because it was hard for a bunch of 9-year olds to narrow down 3 vowels and 2 common constants. If you think about it, STACK and STICK would both have 2. You haven’t figured out which 2 letters and might even eliminate A and I if you aren’t careful.

By: David

David — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:33:01 +0000

Moon: And what’s wrong with tic-tac-toe again? Joking. Actually Jotto is quite hard because there are so many dang consonants out there and no easy formula to get at them. Additionaly, many 5-letter words have only one vowel, and I can think of several that have no a, e, i, o or u’s.

Give it a try with a friend! I think you’ll understand how much fun it is once you try.

By: Moon

Moon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:07:39 +0000

That didn’t make sense, so here’s a word that’s close to figure out the vowels:

Stack
Stock
Stick
Stuck
Steck is not a word, as far as I know. You could use steak, I suppose.

But somebody surely would come up with a word that you can interchange the vowels on. And then find another word for consonants.

By: Moon

Moon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:02:59 +0000

Once you find a word that has all the vowels in it by only changing the vowel, doesn’t it become rote?

Once somebody has played this for a while and gets the right words to guess with, wouldn’t it become like playing a more difficult tic-tac-toe?

I never tried it, I never heard of it, but that was my first thought.

By: Annette

Annette — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:58:36 +0000

My mother used to have the TV tuned to the game show network all the time. This is the basis for the show “Lingo.” It struck me as one of the more interesting shows. Certainly better than 40-year old reruns of “The Match Game!”