Mastermind - Can You Solve this Code-Breaking Game?

Mastermind is the code-breaking game invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert.

Since 1971, the rights to Mastermind have been held by Invicta Plastics of Oadby in the United Kingdom who originally manufactured the game. They have since licensed it's manufacture to Hasbro in most of the world and two other manufactures who have the United States and Israel rights.

In 1977, Donald Knuth demonstrated that the codebreaker can solve the pattern in five moves or less, using an algorithm that progressively reduced the number of possible patterns. Subsequent mathematicians have been finding various algorithms that reduce the average number of turns needed to solve the pattern: in 1993, Kenji Koyama and Tony W. Lai found a method that required an average of 4.340 turns to solve, with a worst case scenario of six turns.

Now it's your turn to solve the code....



In this version, you are the codebreaker trying to solve the code pattern (in both order and color). Your opponent is the computer who begins each game with a new code. Each guess is made by placing a row of code pegs on the decoding board. Once feedback is provided, another guess is made; guesses and feedback continue to alternate until either the codebreaker guesses correctly, or twelve incorrect guesses are made.