What is Three pegs?
Three pegs is the small edition of Code Breaker. The codemaker sets a code of three pegs instead of four, from the same six colours, and colours may still repeat. The codebreaker guesses rows of three, and each guess earns a black peg for every right colour in the right place and a white peg for every right colour in the wrong place.
With 216 possible codes instead of 1,296, the game is short, and every peg of feedback rules out a larger share of the codes that are left. That makes it a good way to learn how to read the black and white pegs before moving on to the standard four-peg game.
Rule changes
| Rule | Standard Code Breaker | Three pegs |
|---|---|---|
| Code length | Standard Code Breaker4 pegs. | Three pegs3 pegs. |
| Possible codes | Standard Code Breaker1,296. | Three pegs216. |
| Other options | Standard Code Breaker10 guesses, six colours, repeated colours allowed and no blanks. | Three pegsThe same options can be set alongside it: 7 or 8 colours, no duplicates, blanks, and a guess limit of 6, 8, 10 or 12. |
History
The board game with coloured pegs, invented by Mordecai Meirowitz in 1970, has been sold in several sizes. A children's edition published in 1996, with an animal theme, used codes of three holes and six colours, the same size as this variant.
Shorter codes are also the usual way to teach the game: with three pegs, the logic of the feedback is the same as in the standard game, but there are few enough codes left after each guess to follow the reasoning by hand.