If you haven't been introduced to Wordle yet, it is a web-based game where, as described here in Wikipedia, "players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word; feedback is given for each guess, in the form of colored tiles, indicating when letters match or occupy the correct position." The web-based program allows players to share their results without giving away the answer to others. As such, it has taken social media by storm.
When I asked family members to help me understand it, my sister compared it to the Jotto game that our grandmother would play with us when we were children. I have to admit that all these years, I thought Grandmom made up the game and the name, Jotto. Turns out I gave her more credit than she deserved about Jotto, but she DOES deserve the credit for all the fond memories of playing the game. 💓 With those memories revived, we set up a family game time playing Jotto via Zoom.
 |
| From top left (and yes I checked it IS left), Emma, Me, Dave, Jean, Katie |
Five players, Three rounds, a lot of laughs and a good time was had by all.
As we played, Katie reminded us that when we played as kids, we weren't told which letters were in the right place (as Wordle does). 😲
If you'd like to try this with your family or friends, here are the rules we used. Please borrow or alter them to suit your group. We chose to stick with 5 letter words with no repeats.
Each player is assigned a number. This is critical on Zoom since the order of video squares is not the same from my screen to yours.
Player #1 has a word in mind.
Player #2 guesses a word. Using the same scheme as Wordle, player #1 tells all other players which letters are GREEN (in the right place) or YELLOW (in the word but out of place).
Players continue in order, using the clues previously revealed by others, until one player guesses the word.
For round 2, Player number 2 has a word in mind and this time Player #3 gets the first guess.
Looking back on the track of our games today, it was advantageous to be in position #4 as a guesser. The longest round took 7 guesses and a few rounds were made in 3.
-Paula
