French Toast: My Favorite Mechanism

About French Toast, from BoardGameGeek:

In each game of French Toast, one player acts as the Toastmaster, drawing a Secret Word that you and your friends have to guess. The catch? The Toastmaster may only communicate by repeating your guesses back to you! Each time someone makes a guess, the Toastmaster must decide whether that guess is “closer” to their Secret Word than the “closest” previous guess. If the new guess is closer, the Toastmaster repeats it back to you. If the new guess isn't closer, the Toastmaster repeats the closest previous guess instead. Keep making clever guesses to get closer and closer to the Secret Word until you can guess the Secret Word itself! What makes one guess “closer” to the Secret Word than another? It's completely up to the Toastmaster! They can use whatever criteria they think will help you guess the Secret Word – and hopefully the rest of you can figure it out! You have only six rounds to guess the Secret Word, so make every guess count!