Mastermind
About
I'm just going to let Wikipedia describe this one. "The codebreaker tries to guess the pattern, in both order and color, within eight to twelve turns. Each guess is made by placing a row of code pegs on the decoding board. Once placed, the codemaker provides feedback by placing from zero to four key pegs in the small holes of the row with the guess. A colored or black key peg is placed for each code peg from the guess which is correct in both color and position. A white key peg indicates the existence of a correct color code peg placed in the wrong position"
The original Mastermind had 6 colors and 4 holes. The version I have is Super Mastermind where they increased it to 8 colors and 5 holes. Wikipedia lists no less than 18 variants at this time.
Thoughts
Tim:
It still stands the test of time as a fun puzzle game. Slightly more difficult than I remember but still fun. I'm thinking it would be fun to purchase two copies so that you could both guess and score at the same time.
Laura:
My grandparents had Mastermind in their shelf of board games, but because the games were well loved and played in the seventies and I didn't show up until the eighties, many of the games were missing many important pieces. Luckily, Tim seems to do a better job keeping his games in order, so I was able to play this classic. The toughest part is the self-doubt you might get during game play with your test cases, and wondering if you can test multiple scenarios at once, or if your idea has a fatal flaw between piece placement and certain colors. I managed to win all of my games as the guesser. While I think it is a good game, it kind of gives me anxiety about possibly losing at the last minute.
Trivia
- Based off of an earlier pencil and paper game called Bulls and Cows that may date back a century or more.
- There exists a thing called the Worst case: Five-guess algorithm. It's for a computer. I just barely understand what it's talking about.
7-29-2020