Masterminds

by: chill

Wed Oct 24, 2007 at 22:13:54 PM MST

This very young married couple from Louisiana claim to have 'solved' the game Mastermind to two moves, and some websites were reporting it today. I don't know about that. I know that in 1993, Kenji Koyama and Tony W. Lai solved it to 4.340 moves. There's a strategy flowchart here that helps you solve in 5 moves or less. You always begin with a guess of BBCC and then based on the response (awarding 1-pt for a white peg, 2-pts for black) use the chart to select the next optimal guess.

For example: B=Black, C=Cyan, G=Green, R=Red, Y=Yellow, W=White BBCC - 1 white marker CGRR - 1 white marker CYBY - 1 white marker BRWW - 2 white markers ...there is only one possible solution

link to online Mastermind (loads java)