Master Mind: Lets Play

For my Finite Math class I was to play a game called Master Mind and evaluate the logic of the game.

Here is the link to the game.

As soon as I read the instructions I recognized the game. I didn’t know it by the name Master Mind but I had played it before. I immediately knew my starting move would be all on e color. That way if the color exists anywhere on the board I will be told so.

First I guessed all blue and nothing happened. For a moment I was confused by this games feedback, I didn’t see any but I realized they were all wrong. Then I did all green and all were wrong again. All brown, I messed up and didn’t notice one was right. All purple, all wrong. At this point I noticed a brown was right and so I choose one brown to test if it was the first position that was right, the rest red to see if there were any red.

I got lucky and that was the solution one brown, three red. So it took me 5 moves on my first game and I won. I have to say six colors seamed like a lot to me, I think I was expecting four.

As for calculating the number of possibilities, four sets each have six possibilities. I almost thought 4 x 6 but no, I think it’s 6 x 6 x 6 x 6, so 1,296.  After arriving at this number I checked online and it seams to be accurate.

The way I used feedback in the game was that when I got one right I planned to mix my code and see where I got it right then to leave the right one there and work on finding others. When all brown came back with one right, I knew there was one brown somewhere. If it had said two right then I would have known there were two brown somewhere.