Jotto Help

Jotto is a game of logic and words.

Rules

The computer has chosen a five letter word, called the target. Your task is to deduce that word. The word comes from a list of more than 3,000 known words. A word may have any combination of letters (including duplicates).

Guess Panel

This is the panel on the left-most side of the program's user interface. It has rows of boxes. You'll type one letter per box in the active row. Then press the "Guess" button. The computer will compare your guessed word against the target word. Beside your guess it will tell you how many exact and partial matches there are. An exact match has the same letter in the same position in both your guess and the target. A partial match is a letter in your guess that is also in the target, but is not an exact match.

Here are some examples:

Word Pairs Exact Partial
louse
purse		 2 exact matches (s and e) 1 partial match (u)
queue
queer		 3 exact matches (q, u, and e) 1 partial match (the last e)
queue
feats		 0 exact matches 1 partial match (e)

New Game Panel

The New Game panel has four controls:

Help:
The Help button shows you this information.
New Game:
Click on the new game button to clear all the previous guesses and select a new target word to guess. How the word is selected depends on the remaining two controls.
Difficulty:
The computer will choose a new target word with the given word difficulty. "Easy" words are common words that most primary school children would know. "Medium" adds words that most high school students would know. Finally, "Difficult" adds words that are pretty unusual.
Optional Target:
You can have a friend choose a target word for you to guess. Type it in the box and then click "New Game."

Assign Colors Panel

You may categorize the letters of the alphabet to help you in your deductions. There are four categories that can be assigned:

Unused Letters:
These are letters that have not yet been used in any guess. All letters start out in this category.
Used Letters:
These are letters that have been used in one of your previous guesses. Jotto color-codes them automatically when you make a guess.
In Target:
These are the letters that are known to be in the target word. If you make a guess where the number of matches adds up to five, the computer will categorize the letters for you. Otherwise, you'll have to do it yourself.
Not In Target:
These are the letters that are known to not be in the target word. If you make a guess that has zero matches, the computer will categorize the letters for you. Otherwise, you'll have to do it yourself.

You can categorize a letter yourself by simply clicking on it. It is assigned to the category shown in the drop-down menu on the left of the panel.

The color assigned to each category can be changed using the Color Preferences sub-panel. For each category, simply choose your preferred color from the corresponding drop-down menu.

Feedback Panel

The feedback panel will give you information in the following circumstances:

There are a variety of hints offered. Choose the number of hints you would like from the left-most drop-down menu. Choose the type of hint from the next drop-down menu. Most hints find words that either have a or do not have a particular letter or set of letters. Choose the letter(s) from the drop-down menu in the middle. In the case of a set of letters, you may either choose one of the categories assigned to the letters or you may type in your own set. Then press the "Get Hint" button and corresponding word(s) will be displayed.

The "words consistent with previous guesses" hint deserves extra explanation. It goes through each word in the list of known words and asks the question: "If this word was the target, would I get exactly the same answers as were actually given?" If the answer is "yes", the word is included in the hint. If it is not, the word is excluded.