A slit or narrow opening. For example, a slot in a machine where one puts coins in to activate it. The word is also used to refer to a place in a schedule or plan: The meeting slotted nicely into the afternoon. A slot can also be the job or position of an employee: She’s been assigned to the slot as chief copy editor.

A casino game in which players insert cash or, in “ticket-in, ticket-out” machines, paper tickets with barcodes, into a designated slot to activate the machine and then spin reels. When a winning combination of symbols appears, the player earns credits according to the pay table displayed on the machine’s screen. Symbols vary by theme but usually include classic objects such as fruits, bells, and stylized lucky sevens.

Modern slot machines use a random-number generator to determine the outcome of each spin. When the machine receives a signal — anything from a lever or button being pulled to the reels stopping on a specific symbol — the random-number generator assigns a number to each possible combination. The machine then sets the reels to stop on the assigned combination. In the case of a jackpot, the random-number generator randomly assigns numbers hundreds of times per second. This means that even if you leave a machine and see someone else win the same jackpot, you could have walked in at exactly the right time to hit the same combination.