Talk:Peg solitaire

IMO most of this article is poorly written. I would like to rewrite it, but if I do so I would remove all reference to the "standard" board the article discusses at present as I have never heard of such a board. The English and European boards being the ones I know. Should I do such an edit? -- SGBailey 22:47 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I tried counting the positions, and wrote about it, didn't think of checking the size of the board that was already there... For the smaller board size (the one looking like a cross, not a circle) it is simple to count all the positions, in a reasonable time, without running out of computer memory, at least, so complete statistics would be possible. &#1603;&#1587;&#1610;&#1662; Cyp 22:55 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The solution presented here is the shortest possible (18 moves) but is not very easy to remember. I suggest adding a second solution where one does 4 "L removals" (one in each arm), and then it's relatively easy to finish the game off. This solution is very easy to remember. Gibell 00:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Triangular Boards Rules
I found a triangular Peg Solitaire game board (21 holes, from Germany) in the attic, and I was wondering if the allowed moves are horizontal, diagonal (up-left / down-right), and diagonal (up-right / down-left). This doesn't appear to be stated anywhere in the article and would be a great addition. I guess the information can be derived from looking at the fastest solution for triangular boards, but people may enjoy checking the rules first, then trying their own strategies and looking at the fastest way after that. --91.55.133.103 (talk) 01:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Self promoting links
There is a person who keeps on putting links on Peg solitaire to his/her web page. Those links could be useful, but I think they are too many and they are at the very top of the list of links. I deleted them, but the user put them back. What do you think? Oleg Alexandrov 17:32, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I reedited them into one single line; fair enough, isn't it? (The material at that website looks interesting enough to me.) — Nol Aders 14:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Numbers
Just in case anyone cares: 2^33=8,589,934,592, and 2^33/8=1,073,741,824. JTTyler 03:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Algorythm/strategy
Other than brute force, intuition, trial and error, or pure memorization, what strategies can be applied to peg solitaire? Why do they work, if they exist? If they don't, why not? Fieari 00:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes lots. I've added a reference to the book The ins & outs of peg solitaire, John D. Beasley which goes into this in a lot of detail. One of the techniques is to divide the board up into blocks which you can remove one at a time, ending up with the "fireplace" which you can then solve ending in the centre. 86.3.141.205 20:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Marble Solitaire
I went ahead and made marble solitaire redirect to here as it appears to be the same game with marbles. Marble solitaire is already mentioned in this article. 91.125.102.152 (talk) 10:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Wording Check
It'd be nice if someone checked the wording I just added - related to the green o meaning. I don't edit wikipedia much. Note the green o only shows up in the triangle solution, I think. I also wasn't very happy with the semicolons vs commas in the section I edited but not being an english major I left it as is. Thanks. RobI (talk) 16:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Tagged as video game?
Why is this article tagged for cleanup as per the guidelines for video games (since March 2010)? This is so not a video game! Is there a better tag that better explains what is wanted? Mogsie (talk) 11:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Analysis of European Solitaire
I know wikipedia is no place for original research, but I did once come up with an alternate proof that there's no solution for European Solitaire starting with one peg in the middle.

It's based on changing the rules to a game where the legal moves of the current game are a subset of the legal moves in the expanded game - the expanded game being easier to analyze.

It predicts which positions can lead to a solution and what position the final piece will be on. It turns out that the predicted solutions are all possible in the original game.

Have fun duplicating this. Proofs are a more fun game than peg puzzles in my opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.74.158 (talk) 23:40, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Number of positions
I know this is somewhat off-topic, but the question can hardly be asked elsewhere... Could anyone think of a function, f(x), that would roughly approximate the amount of positions produced after x moves? I understand it depends greatly on the initial configuration of the board, and on its size, but I could do with at least a general form of sorts... I'm currently trying to implement a brute-force search that writes down all possible positions, then goes one move further from those, all the way until the last peg is left, and the issue is that I can't predict how much memory should be allocated for storing these positions because I don't know how many there will be.95.133.95.206 (talk) 19:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Brain Buster and Hi-Q
I notice that Hi-Q redirects here. I guess that's fair enough. But there's no page for Brain Buster, the (simpler?) peg solitaire game that was packaged with Hi-Q back in the 1960s. LightSpeed (talk) 06:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Self Promoting Links
I'm new to Wiki, so please accept my apology if I'm doing something wrong by making this request. I have put a few tools addressing a variation of Peg Solitaire up on my site that I think readers of this article would find interesting and useful. It's at jcookieee.com. I'd like to list it in external links, but the filter feels it violates the self promotion rule. I understand why, and it's probably right. So I'd appreciate it if someone reading this would please look at it and if you feel it is worth adding, add it for me as "*6 Move Peg Solitaire (player, solver, and playback)". If you feel it isn't appropriate and you have the time, I'd really appreciate some advice on how I might make it appropriate. I'm at jcook@ieee.org. Thanks. Jcookieee (talk) 03:28, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Good Game
I think that should be a link to this game http://peg-solitaire.sourceforge.net/. It has the largest collection of problems published in the world and an efficient algorithm to solve the games. Moreover, it is open source! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.61.188.15 (talk) 17:48, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Big L
I think a 6 peg L (3 on one side and 4 on the other side) is impossible. Using the proof of no european solution there would be allways 2A, 2B and 2C positions. Omega Meteor (talk) 11:58, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is easy to prove exactly as you describe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gibell (talk • contribs) 18:46, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

7x7 Triangular Board
There should be discussion of a 7x7 triangular board, having 28 holes. I bought such a puzzle and the instructions implied it is possible to start with 1 hole in the center, and play until there is only one peg left in the center. I wrote a computer program to solve this and it concluded that there is no solution. I was hoping to find corroboration in this article. Rennybosch (talk) 02:34, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

See http://home.comcast.net/~gibell/pegsolitaire/tindex.html

SAS program
This should be removed, in my opinion. It could simply be listed in a link. There is no reason to list the source code for programs in this web page. Particularly in obscure programming languages like SAS.

I agree. It's an awful mess and 99.9% of people visiting this page will have no interest in it, not even programmers. FractalFive (talk) 12:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I've removed it. Feel free to shout at me if this was inappropriate, but the article looks MUCH nicer now. FractalFive (talk) 13:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion for Improvement: Pretty Pictures
This article relies way too much on unintuitive ASCII art. "" is where a peg was, and "" is where it is now? I have played Dwarf Fortress in text mode for years, yet still find the diagrams difficult to follow. If anyone is looking to improve the article, kindly draw some actual images. Bonus points for animation. (note: I am a lousy person because I'm annoyed enough to complain about it but not enough to fix it) ~ Eidako (talk) 10:38, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I should mention here that in the "Solutions to the English game" section I added an SVG which when clicked on is an interactive solution guide that shows green arrows for each move when the correct peg/marble is hovered over with the mouse pointer. Mardeg (talk) 08:24, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Add information
Hello, I made some changes clarifying avoir the origin of the solitaire game so as not to confuse it with card games! we can discuss the discussion, I apologize, if that's the case, it's information about it. thanks for understanding. R.Dani Rinah R.Dani Rinah (talk) 07:45, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Alan Touring solved it
Alan Touring figured out the solution and described it in a letter to an 8-year-old girl.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/enigma-genius-alan-turing-solved-4636115 Enigma genius Alan Turing solved my childhood puzzle - a year later he killed himself Maria Summerscale was a family friend of the tortured genius who helped crack the German Enigma Code but who was later prosecuted for the crime of being gay By Pamela Owen Mirror 16 NOV 2014 --Nbauman (talk) 03:46, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

RfC
Please comment at Talk:Solitaire Onceinawhile (talk) 20:15, 29 August 2023 (UTC)