Peg Solitaire: The Challenging Game of Skill

[mattmns]

What is the name of that game where you have a triangle shaped board with 15 (10?) holes and 14 (9?) pegs, and you have to jump each peg and your goal is to be left with one peg? Usually found at Cracker Barrel, and some other restaurants. Often says if you leave one you are a genius, 2 smart, 3 dumb, etc...

 

[mattmns]

LOL, I found the game and beat it, one peg left. There is an online version here: http://www.crackerbarrel.com/games-kids.cfm?doc_id=42

interesting... there is a "beginner" and an "advanced" yet both are the same and I beat both

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

I remember that game Mattmns. First time I tried I got 2 left over, 2nd time...

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/3105/boneheadpegsd8.jpg

 

[Danger]

I've played the game a few times (with dismal results), but I've never seen a name attached to it.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

Finally did it, got it down to 1 on beginner.

 

[Danger]

Nobody likes a smartass.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

lol well it took me a good 5 attempts. I knew that the first move didn't matter so it was really just about finding the proper 2nd move.

 

[mattmns]

If you want to feel really smart play their checkers game!

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

lol, the computer's king walked right in front of my king.

Tough game indeed.

 

[Gokul43201]

What's the maximum number you can leave behind?

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

I think that on beginner the max is 5, on advanced I got it up to 7 left.

Although advanced changes.

 

[Danger]

THIS IS NOT A HIJACK!
I've been meaning to start a thread just to get the answer to one question. Since it's game-oriented, I'm going to ask it here instead. How the hell does Minesweeper work? While I was under the impression that the minefield is random, I know for a fact that it doesn't choose the locations until after you click on a square to start the game. The reason that I know this is that after the tens of thousands of times that I've played it, I have not once ever hit a mine on the first click.
I do not want this to turn into a 'Minesweeper Thread', such as existed before, with all of the cheats and whatnot. I just want to know how it's programmed.

 

[jim mcnamara]

More of "lowjack", then?

Here, read this, the author ran a debugger on minesweeper to see how it works...

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/minememoryreader.asp

 

[Danger]

Thanks, Jim. That's a lot better response than I expected.

edit: Now that I've looked it over, and having no programming knowledge, I still can't figure out why the random map generation apparently doesn't cut in until after the first 'discovery' click. I can't believe that it's statistically possible to absolutely never hit one on the first click in the course of 14 or 15 thousand games, and yet it appears from that analysis that the randomness begins immediately after clicking the smiley. I'm confused.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Mathworld calls it "peg solitaire". I googled for a while expecting to find a more historical name, but came up empty.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PegSolitaire.html

Apparently, there is a version marketed in India under the name Brainvita.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

First click in Minesweeper

I ran the custom version and designated a 9x9 board with 64 bombs in it. I then proceeded to click the smiley, then the square directly below the smiley repeating these two over and over again for 30 iterations. It never had a bomb in it. This is not reasonable if the probability of a bomb in that square were 64/81. I expect the actual probablility is zero that the first square has a bomb in it.

Then I performed 30 iterations of the following program:

1. Click the smiley
2. Click the top left square.
3. If it's a bomb, note what is in the square below the smiley, and go to step 1
4. If it's not a bomb, click the square below the one just clicked and go to step 3.

The square below the smiley had a bomb 27 times. This is probably reasonable given the probablility of 64/81 that the square would have a bomb.

Given this data, I expect that the calculation of the location of the bombs is delayed until the first square is clicked, not when the smiley is clicked.

 

[Danger]

Thanks, Jimmy. I feel vindicated.