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Jotto from 1979
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Dave Dyer
May 24, 2022, 10:59:51 PM5/24/22
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Way back in the day, I wrote a program to play Jotto, which is a near relative
of the current rage Wordle. The enabling thing at the time was that found a dictionary of 5 letter words, maybe on a decus tape? I recall that it was somehow derived from MIT-AI too.
Anyway, through the miracle of packrat syndrone and simh, I can still
compile and run it today, which I've just done! Here's the original HELP
command, misspellings intact.
the game is normally played with a 4 letter word
composed of the letters A-F. # is always available as a
gaurenteed non-matching blank.
NPOS=length of word you want (default=4)
NCHR=number of letters in the alphabet (default=6)
DUPES=0 gaurentees that the computer will not choose
the same letter twice in one code
DUPES=1 allows duplicate letters (default)
MATCH=1 sets the computer to try solving the same codes
it gives you (default)
EXPERT=1 allows the machine to choose harder words in JOTTO
(default=0)
to play:
type PLAY then
BIG starts a game with NCHR=8 NPOS=5 DUPES=1
JOTTO plays the JOTTO variation
M xxxx makes a move with letters xxxx
P re paints the screen
PG makes the computer play a game with itself
QUIT gives up, and tells you the answer
RULES lists the rules of the game
SMALL starts a game woth NCHR=6 NPOS=4 DUPES=1
SOLVE xxxx makes the computer solve code xxxx
T lists the bit switches in TALK
TEST xxxx shows how a guess splits the field of possibilities
U unmakes a move
and here, after cleanup, is a sample run.
solve macro
P A L E S 1 Bull
S I R E D 1 Cow
H O R N S 2 Cows
R O O M Y 3 Cows
M A J O R 2 Bulls 2 Cows
M A C R O 5 Bulls - I got it!
solve pacer
S I R E S 1 Bull 1 Cow
D O L E S 1 Bull
E A T E R 3 Bulls
R A C K S 2 Bulls 1 Cow?
P A C E R 5 Bulls - I got it!
Not bad!
of the current rage Wordle. The enabling thing at the time was that found a dictionary of 5 letter words, maybe on a decus tape? I recall that it was somehow derived from MIT-AI too.
Anyway, through the miracle of packrat syndrone and simh, I can still
compile and run it today, which I've just done! Here's the original HELP
command, misspellings intact.
the game is normally played with a 4 letter word
composed of the letters A-F. # is always available as a
gaurenteed non-matching blank.
NPOS=length of word you want (default=4)
NCHR=number of letters in the alphabet (default=6)
DUPES=0 gaurentees that the computer will not choose
the same letter twice in one code
DUPES=1 allows duplicate letters (default)
MATCH=1 sets the computer to try solving the same codes
it gives you (default)
EXPERT=1 allows the machine to choose harder words in JOTTO
(default=0)
to play:
type PLAY then
BIG starts a game with NCHR=8 NPOS=5 DUPES=1
JOTTO plays the JOTTO variation
M xxxx makes a move with letters xxxx
P re paints the screen
PG makes the computer play a game with itself
QUIT gives up, and tells you the answer
RULES lists the rules of the game
SMALL starts a game woth NCHR=6 NPOS=4 DUPES=1
SOLVE xxxx makes the computer solve code xxxx
T lists the bit switches in TALK
TEST xxxx shows how a guess splits the field of possibilities
U unmakes a move
and here, after cleanup, is a sample run.
solve macro
P A L E S 1 Bull
S I R E D 1 Cow
H O R N S 2 Cows
R O O M Y 3 Cows
M A J O R 2 Bulls 2 Cows
M A C R O 5 Bulls - I got it!
solve pacer
S I R E S 1 Bull 1 Cow
D O L E S 1 Bull
E A T E R 3 Bulls
R A C K S 2 Bulls 1 Cow?
P A C E R 5 Bulls - I got it!
Not bad!
Lars Brinkhoff
May 25, 2022, 12:12:07 PM5/25/22
to
Dave Dyer wrote:
> Way back in the day, I wrote a program to play Jotto, which is a near
> relative of the current rage Wordle. The enabling thing at the time
> was that found a dictionary of 5 letter words, maybe on a decus tape?
> I recall that it was somehow derived from MIT-AI too.
The SAIL version can be found here:
> Way back in the day, I wrote a program to play Jotto, which is a near
> relative of the current rage Wordle. The enabling thing at the time
> was that found a dictionary of 5 letter words, maybe on a decus tape?
> I recall that it was somehow derived from MIT-AI too.
https://www.saildart.org/JOTTO%5BCSP,SYS%5D
https://www.saildart.org/JOTTO.DIC%5BCSP,SYS%5D
Adam Sampson used the FAIL source code and an MIT-AI binary to
reconstruct source for the MIT version:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/jotto.101
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/jotto.dict
> Anyway, through the miracle of packrat syndrone and simh, I can still
> compile and run it today, which I've just done!
Dave Dyer
May 26, 2022, 3:32:05 PM5/26/22
to
> Can your version be made available somewhere?
Dave Dyer
May 26, 2022, 3:38:31 PM5/26/22
to
On Thursday, May 26, 2022 at 12:32:05 PM UTC-7, Dave Dyer wrote:
> > Can your version be made available somewhere?
> It's not really playable, even on simulators. It was written in the "glass tty" era, and the display code is full of control sequences for the obsolete and forgotten terminals that my employer was using at the time.
Also, it was written in "Trip", an extinct proprietary language which only exists in my simulator. Trip was an interactive compile-and-go language, modeled on early lisp environments, but it produced native pdp-10 code. Among other amusing quirks, the default radix in Trip was 8. You made numbers decimal by adding a .
> > Can your version be made available somewhere?
> It's not really playable, even on simulators. It was written in the "glass tty" era, and the display code is full of control sequences for the obsolete and forgotten terminals that my employer was using at the time.
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