About Peg Solitaire
Peg Solitaire is played on a cross-shaped board of 33 holes. All holes except the centre start with a peg, and you remove pegs by jumping over them. The aim is to finish with a single peg, ideally in the centre hole.
How to play
- This is the English board: a cross with 33 holes. At the start, 32 holes have pegs and the centre is empty.
- A move is a jump: a peg leaps over a neighbouring peg into an empty hole directly beyond it, and the jumped peg is removed.
- Jumps go up, down, left or right only. Diagonal jumps are not allowed.
- The game ends when no jump is possible anywhere on the board.
- Your score is 33 minus the number of pegs left (minimum 1), plus a 20-point bonus if the last single peg is in the centre. One peg in the centre scores 52, the maximum.
Controls
- Mouse or touch: tap a peg to select it. Holes it can jump into light up; tap one to make the jump.
- Tap the selected peg again to deselect it, or tap another peg to select that one instead.
- The Undo button takes back jumps one at a time, all the way to the start if you like.
Tips and strategy
- Each jump removes exactly one peg, so a perfect game is always 31 jumps.
- Avoid stranding pegs in the arms of the cross. A peg alone at the end of an arm can only be rescued by another peg coming to it.
- Clear the arms early and work toward the centre. Pegs grouped together near the middle are much easier to finish than pegs spread around the edges.
- Think in packages. A common technique is to clear a 3 x 2 block of pegs next to an empty hole using a short fixed sequence; learning a few of these makes the game far more manageable.
- Use Undo to explore. If a line of play leaves an isolated peg, go back a few jumps and try a different order.
Background
Peg solitaire was popular in France by the late 17th century; an engraving from 1697 by Claude Auguste Berey shows a French princess playing it. The 33-hole cross used here is known as the English board, while the French board adds four extra holes. Solving the English board so that one peg finishes in the centre is a well-studied problem in recreational mathematics.
Questions
- Is it possible to finish with one peg in the centre?
- Yes. The English board starting with an empty centre can be solved to a single centre peg, and doing so earns the maximum score of 52.
- How do I start over in the middle of a game?
- There is no separate restart button during play, but Undo can take you all the way back to the starting position.