Jotto
| No. of Players: | 2 |
| Type of Game: | written |
| What you need: | pen and paper |
Goal
To guess the secret word chosen by one's opponent.
How to play
The two players each choose a five-letter word and then take turns trying to guess the word of their opponent. With each guess the player tells the guesser if there are any matching letters between the two words (regardless of position). Also, only unique letter matches need to be acknowledged. For example, if the secret word is PENNY and the guess is NEXUS, there are two letters that match: E and N (i.e., N is not counted twice since the guess word only has one N). The first player to successfully guess the other player's secret word is the winner. It is recommended that players also agree on other rules, such as whether duplicate letters and proper nouns are allowed. Words of varying length can be used to adjust game difficulty.
Other variations of this game are Secret Word and Super Secret Word.
Example
Alberta chooses the word GHOST. Bob first guesses HONEY and he is informed that there are two letters shared between the two words. In subsequent rounds, Bob slowly eliminates possible letters in the secret word.
| Bob: | How about CHOKE? |
| Alberta: | Still two letters. |
| Bob: | EPOCH? |
| Alberta: | Still two letters. |
| Bob: | FORTH? |
| Alberta: | Three letters. |
| Bob: | BOOTH? |
| Alberta: | Three letters. |
| Bob: | MONTH? |
| Alberta: | Three letters. |
| Bob: | CLOTH? |
| Alberta: | Three letters. |
| Bob: | PHOTO? |
| Alberta: | Three letters. |
| Bob: | SHOUT |
| Alberta: | Four letters. |
And so on.
Did you know?
On October 23, 2018, the Mega Millions lottery paid out its first billion dollar jackpot to an anonymous winner in South Carolina. How much was it? A cool $1,537,000,000. No word on whether this person chose to receive $878 million all at once, or the full amount paid in yearly installments of $53 million over 29 years.
But this wasn't the highest lottery jackpot ever. That record goes to a Powerball payout of $1,586,000,000 on January 13, 2016. Winning tickets were sold in three states and the names of these lucky people we do know. They were Marvin and Mae Acosta of California, Maureen Smith and David Kaltschmidt of Florida, and John and Lisa Robinson of Tennessee.
As of October 2021, there has been only one other lottery that has paid out more than a billion dollars. That was another Mega Millions winner from Michigan on January 22, 2021. An Oakland County lottery club claimed the $1,050,000,000 prize. They chose the one-time payment of $776 million. But after tax withholdings, they were forced to split an amount just over half the original jackpot. Still, not bad for a $2 ticket!
In case you're wondering, the images under the title of this word game form a rebus puzzle:
JAY + LOTTO - L = JOTTO
