Solved games
In brief
Each game below was played in the app's engine, which calculated the clues. For each guess, the last column gives the number of codes still possible: those that would have given the same clues for all the guesses already played.
A game at Easy level
Easy level: 4 pegs, 6 colors, 10 rows, 360 possible codes at the start. Secret code: (blue, red, purple, yellow). Game won in 4 guesses.
| Guess | Pegs | Clues | Codes still possible |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 misplaced | 88 | |
| 2 | 1 correct, 2 misplaced | 16 | |
| 3 | 2 correct, 1 misplaced | 1 | |
| 4 | 4 correctly placed | 1 |
The first attempt has no correctly placed pegs: every color present is therefore somewhere other than where it was placed. That leaves 88 codes; the following attempts leave 16, 1 and 1, and the last one is the code.
A game at Intermediate level
Intermediate level: 5 pegs, 8 colors, 10 rows, 6,720 possible codes at the start. Secret code: (orange, brown, red, blue, green). Game won in 5 attempts.
| Guess | Pegs | Clues | Codes still possible |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 misplaced | 1 920 | |
| 2 | 3 misplaced | 464 | |
| 3 | 2 correct, 1 misplaced | 32 | |
| 4 | 2 correct, 1 misplaced | 7 | |
| 5 | 5 correctly placed | 1 |
Before the last attempt, 7 codes remain possible. The code played, orange, brown, red, blue, green, is one of them, and it's the right one: playing a code that is still possible gives a chance to win right away. The strategy explains this choice.
A game at Hard level, with repeats
Hard level: 6 pegs, 9 colors, 20 rows, 430,920 possible codes at the start. Secret code: (purple, yellow, yellow, black, orange, gray). Game won in 7 attempts.
| Guess | Pegs | Clues | Codes still possible |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 correctly placed, 1 misplaced | 70 200 | |
| 2 | 1 correct, 2 misplaced | 8 734 | |
| 3 | 2 correctly placed, 2 misplaced | 386 | |
| 4 | 3 correctly placed, 2 misplaced | 4 | |
| 5 | 3 correctly placed, 1 misplaced | 2 | |
| 6 | 2 correctly placed, 4 misplaced | 1 | |
| 7 | 6 correctly placed | 1 |
The code repeats 1 color. Attempt 2 places 2 orange pegs although the code contains only 1: the extra pegs earn no clue. At Hard level, a color appears at most 2 times in the code, which limits in advance what such an attempt can earn.
A Last Chance game
Game drawn by the app at Intermediate level (5 pegs, 8 colors): the first 9 rows are already played, one row remains. Can you find the code?
| Row | Pegs | Clues |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 misplaced | |
| 2 | 3 misplaced | |
| 3 | 1 correctly placed, 1 misplaced | |
| 4 | 3 misplaced | |
| 5 | 3 misplaced | |
| 6 | 3 misplaced | |
| 7 | 1 correctly placed, 1 misplaced | |
| 8 | 1 correct, 2 misplaced | |
| 9 | 2 correctly placed, 2 misplaced |
See the solution
Only one code fits all these rows: (brown, orange, purple, black, green). Played on the last row, it wins.