A relaxed word game for friends and family. One move at a time, on your own schedule.
How it plays
You and a friend each pick a secret five-letter word. Trade moves on your own schedule. After every move you learn how many letters your guess shares with their word. Position does not matter. Rule letters in and out, narrow it down, and deduce their word before they deduce yours.
Never played? Your first game is a guided one. JotBot walks you through it a move at a time, so you pick it up by playing instead of reading a rulebook.
Part word game, part deduction, all delightfully low pressure.
Take your turn whenever, like messaging. Lose signal and keep playing; your move syncs when you reconnect.
Unlimited solo games, online or off. The daily challenge keeps pace with you, all the way up to Impossible.
A guided first game teaches the whole idea in a few moves, with no rules to read. Replay it any time from Settings.
Choose from 20 JotBot avatars, all free, plus a name your friends will know you by. Read the board in Focus or Side-by-side, and add manual letter-marking if you like to track by hand.
A peek
Get better
A few small habits - opening wide, reading every number, isolating one letter at a time - turn Jottly from a game of hunches into a game of deduction. Read the strategy guide.
The maker
I build software for a living, and I love it. I've been fortunate to work on some of the most widely used apps in the world, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Acrobat. I also build small apps of my own, like the one this page is about.
I made Jottly because it's a fun, friendly word game that I enjoy playing, and I think you will too.
I read every email and reply when I can. Drop me a line.
Support
Email support@icedmatchalabs.com. We read every message and usually reply within a couple of days.
Pick a secret five-letter word; your opponent does too. Take turns. Each move shows how many letters your guess shares with their secret word, wherever those letters sit. Use those clues to deduce their word before they deduce yours.
No. Your first game is a guided one: JotBot gives you a word, suggests each move, and explains what every score means as it happens. You can replay it any time from Settings → How to play.
Yes, in Settings → Gameplay. Read the board in Focus (your guesses front and center) or Side-by-side (both players at once). Auto deduction marks the letters the app can prove in or out, and it never gives the secret away. Prefer to track by hand? Turn on Type/Track mode for manual letter-marking tools.
Tap New game, choose your secret word, then Invite a friend and share the link. They open it, pick their own secret word, and the game begins.
Yes. Tap New game → Play JotBot any time, online or off, or take the daily challenge everyone shares.
Enable notifications for Jottly in iOS Settings → Notifications → Jottly.
Completely. No ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, and no sign-up. All 20 JotBot avatars are included free, and they’re cosmetic only, so they never affect gameplay.
Swipe a game on the Home screen to delete it. There’s no account, so uninstalling the app removes its local data.
Privacy
Effective June 30, 2026
Jottly is made by Drew Sullivan. The short version: we built Jottly to be played and shared, not to harvest your data.
We collect no email, contacts, location, advertising identifier, or usage analytics. Jottly has no login and integrates no third-party advertising, attribution, or analytics services. The only detail ever shared is a display name, if you choose one, and only with the friend you're playing, so they know who they're playing. That's its only use; we never use it to track or profile you. Anonymous play is totally fine!
To make a two-player word game work, some information is created on your device and, for games with a friend, synced through Apple’s iCloud / CloudKit so both players stay in sync:
This data lives on your device and in Apple’s iCloud infrastructure under Apple’s privacy policy. We don’t run our own servers and don’t use this content for advertising, profiling, or tracking.
Jottly is completely free. There are no in-app purchases, subscriptions, or ads, so there is nothing to buy and no payment information is ever collected or processed.
If you email us, we’ll receive your email address and message, and use them only to read and respond. We don’t add you to any list.
Jottly suits a general audience and does not knowingly collect personal information from children. With no account and no data collection, no personal profile of any player is built.
Game data stays until you delete a game in the app or remove the app. Deleting the app removes its local data; iCloud game data follows Apple’s iCloud handling for your account.
If this policy changes, we’ll update the date above and post the revised version here.
Questions? Email support@icedmatchalabs.com.
