Lets Try it Again

(Make sure to read the FIRST post down below which explains the game.)

I have to give props to my sister Lala. She and her husband taught me this game in 1972 when we drove down to Miami from Washington DC. I was brought along to babysit their 4 kids (Vinny, Alex, Margaret and Patrick) while the adults went out to dinner and family parties in Miami.

My second favorite word is "Ratio"

Again the students guess:

ocean - 2
light - 2
bumpy - 0

The zero for bumpy really helps and they once again have captured 4 of my letters.

fever - 1
joked - 1

One's are not good. They do not help much.

waxed - 1 DAM !! another one, no good

but by now they have asked 23 of the 26 letters...and q is out because it must come with u. Only letter they have not asked are z and s.

radio - 4 BINGO !!

the "ad" is in waxed and that only has one...so the R, I and the O must be letters.

but if the 0 is in, then the E is out in waxed...and so forth and so forth.

and if the 0 is in, then the D is out in in joked...and it must be the A !!

R, I, O, A and some other letter from light which had 2.

RATIO !!...and that is what we were studying in class with trigonometry.

So i was playing my good friend Malcolm Stewart (who ran cross country for Princeton, got a perfect score on the LSAT's and got his law degree from Yale) who now argues cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

And he is also my bridge partner when he taught English here at Berkeley, Tampa back in the 1980's.

One night after playing in a bridge tournament, we went back to his apartment and i taught him how to play Jadda (the 5-letter word game). He gave me a word and i figured it out in under 10 words guessed which is usually my goal with normal words.

Now it was HIS turn to guess my word. I asked him if he wanted an easy, medium or hard word. He asked for a hard one.

After about 10 or 12 guesses he had 4 of my letters M. Y, R, H.

The word was Myrrh !!! one of the gifts of the Three Kings to baby Jesus.

He kicked my out of the apartment. LOL

Jadda - the 5 letter word game

I teach my students this little word game every year, and they love to play it. I do try to suggest they play on the weekends with their friends and especially on car trips. It makes the time go by so much faster and at the same time it exercises the mind.

Here is how it goes:

1. I (the teacher) thinks of a 5 letter word...lets say "graph" for this example.

2. students write down 5 letter words...and then i tell them how many of their letters are in my word. For instance

ocean - 1

light - 2

bumpy - 1

you will notice they have already asked 15 different letters of the alphabet and they have captured 4 of my letters ( a, g, h, p ), but they do NOT know which of those 15 letters belong to MY word ("graph" which i have in my head)

so they must ask more words, like

fever - 1

moons - 0 (zero's are good...because now the students can go back to "ocean" and cross out the o and the n...leaving them with 1 from the "cae"

they can cross out the m in "bumpy" and it is always good to get rid of the s !!

some people call this game "mastermind" and it is, because it does require logic.

ghost - 2 (now this is good because it means there are 2 letter in the "ght" since the o and the s are out from "moons")

so now we have

cae - 1

ght - 2

fever - 1

and bupy - 1 (the m was crossed out from "moons")

so someone might say:

GRAPE !! and that has 4 or my letters !!!

but the r and the e can only be one from fever...so the letters must be G, P, A

and if it must be the A, then the E is out from "ocean"

this might seem difficult, but once you have played it once or twice, it is quite easy and enjoyable, if you like to challenge your mind.

So now the students have G, P, A, R and need one more from the "ht"

GRAPH !!! they yell especially since we are studying graphing in class.

Notice it only took 7 guesses to figure out the word Graph.
(ocean, light, bumpy, fever, moons, ghost, and grape) Pretty impressive considering there are close to 3,000 5-letter words in our dictionary.

I was driving to Miami one time with my two sons, Brandon and Austin. They were 12 and 8 at the time. They know i LOVE to play Jadda especially when i am driving (I would not recommend this...way too dangerous).

So they gave me a word to guess and after about 10 guesses, i had the 5 letters.
So i asked is the word "TREES" ? and they laughed and said 5 !! but not the word.

So i asked is the word "STEER" ? and they laughed and said 5 !! again, but that is not the word.

So i asked is the word "RESET" ? again a lot of laughter and NO !!

So i asked, is this a word "I" know ? YES !!

Is this an every day word ? YES !!

So we stopped for lunch and meanwhile my mind went through about 120 permutations.
(that is 5 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 1 = 120...since you can not repeat the letters in this particular word)

When we got back in the car, we were half way between Naples and Miami. It is called Alligator Alley because of the Everglades Swamps on both sides of the road.

I said, "Ok, i give up. What is the word ??"

And they both said, ESTER !! all excited and proud of themselves.

I asked what the hell is ESTER ?? and they said it is right here on the label of the Gatorade. IT is a chemical in Gatorade.

I stopped the car in the middle of Alligator Alley and kicked them both out of the car !!

You guys can walk the rest of the way to Miami !!....lol