Bulls and Cleots is an obscure pen and pencil game typically played by two people...in my sixth grade at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary around early 1968 it became something of the rage among the geeky, nerdy brain kids, so naturally I was all into it. Our version of the game was for each player to write down a four-digit number, no repeating digits, and keep it face-down on the side. Then we take turns speaking out numbers in our progressive goal to guess the others' number before they guess ours. So, say, I have "3672" as my "secret" number and my opponent calls out "4625". The "6" is guessed correctly, not only for being within my number but also in the correct place: so that's a "bull". The other numeral guessed that is present in mine is "2", but it is out of place so it is a "cleot". My response to "4625" is to say "1 bull, 1 cleot": this process gives clues eventually leading to the correct solution. We go back and forth until one of us gets the right answer...and then on to the next game. With the name "bulls and cleots"...which for decades I thought was "bulls and cleods"...the "bull" is obviously short for "bullseye", but I haven't as yet found on the Internet any definition of what the heck a "cleot" is. The game was later adapted to an electronic version on Mastermind in the mid-1970s, and I think its now available as a phone app called "bulls and cows". I liked it because, frankly, I was pretty doggone good at reasoning out the solution. Sadly, I haven't played it since the 1960s, though. There's no reason I see why the game can't be expanded to more digits than 4...say 5 or 6...but once you approach 10 the nature of the game drastically changes...
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Ha! I too played this game, at about the same time and age. Later, I wrote a calculator program (TI-59 and later, HP-41c) to play against.
ReplyDeleteThe modern WORDLE game is a close cousin, but you get additional hints because of the way the english language works.