Lingo version 19!
Welcome to a new version of Lingo! First version change in over 4 years! Here are the rules, thanks to Magmar.
Game Play
- The game is like MasterMind, except with words, usually 5-12 letters long. There's a given word with a given amount of letters, and everyone guesses it. The person in charge each round rates the guesses with how many letters are in the correct places (right), how many letters are in the word but not the right places (misplaced), and how many not at all (wrong).
- Say I've come up with the secret word "cow". I'll tell you "Three letters". You guess "two". Someone else guesses "oar". A third person guesses "the".
- I'll return the results as:
- Two: 0-2-1 (None correct, two misplaced letters, one letter is irrelevant to the word.)
- Oar: 0-1-2
- The: 0-0-3
- Using that logic, you could recognize that two of the letters in "two" are found in the word; a third letter, which may overlap with the original two, is possibly misplaced. The letters in "the" are not found in the secret word, so you know that the "t" in "two" is not in the secret word. So "w" and "o" are found in the secret word.
- Following that logic, you know that it must be "o" from "oar" that is also in the secret word. Since the "o" cannot fall in the first or third slot, you can discern that "o" is the second letter. And since "w" cannot be in the second slot, it must be either in the first or third.
- Your word is either _ o w, or w o _. All other letters presented are not in the word.
- Game play continues until somebody properly guesses the word. That person then runs the next round of Lingo.
Rules
- 1. I do use a checker to verify how many right, wrong and misplaced. Please try to work them out on your own rather than search around online for a puzzle solving program (or even making one yourself). That's cheating and it kills the fun and challenge. You can use a word list and grep, but that's it. If you need a word list, you can use this one: <Zip compressed: 1.4MB><Uncompressed: 5156KB>
- 2. You may guess as many times as you like in each puzzle, but only guess one word at a time, and do not post twice until the current host has posted with the reply to your original word.
- 3. Choose words that are in the English language, not hyphenated or spaced, up to 15 letters long, and try not to make the words too obscure. Don't use proper nouns, as they are not universal.
- HOWEVER: When guessing, you may use a proper, one-word noun, like Wednesday.
- Also, words have to be verifiable through an official English dictionary or thesaurus as real words that are not classified as "archaic" (i.e. talketh).
- 4. You can see a list of previous words and their winners here. Try to be original and avoid repeating the same words again and again.
The official Lingo Calculator™ by Lady Vulpix can be found here! (That's how I check the 1-2-0 etc.) No it won't help you since you don't know the original word.
