This bloody Reader's Digest 'Mystery Gift' * peg solitaire from the 1970s that I rescued on my recent visit to the Aged Ps is driving everyone in our house to distraction.
For the uninitiated I should explain that the purpose of the game is to remove pegs by jumping them with others, checkers style (vertically and horizontally, but not diagonally) until just one peg remains - in the centre hole.
Can I do it? No dear reader, I cannot - and sadly that has been the case since I first attempted it, aged 8.
I know there'll be lots of boffins out there on the interweb who'll have posted the solution, but that's not in the spirit of the thing is it?
Can anyone actually do it without cheating?
You can have a go at it on your computer here (and there's a load of formulae for cracking it underneath, but if you use them Your God will know and Punish you).
If you manage to do it, I hate you.
* A mystery gift was what you got when you bought mail order items from The Reader's Digest. My Dad, as we have discussed here previously, bought a lot of LP box sets. The mystery gift, though it promised so much, was almost always a piece of shite. This one is the only one we kept.
We (me and the parents) had one of these. So that's where it came from.
ReplyDeleteAnd no I can't remember ever solving it either, and I'm with you - I wouldn't want to spoil the mystery by looking up the answer.
You do realize that Google will bring a lot of folks here who really weren't searching for THIS game...
ReplyDeleteHey! Welcome Googling pervs!!
ReplyDeleteGood gag, eh? You say to a girl, 'Let's spend the evening pegging', and you end up playing this??
ReplyDeleteMy set was orange with yellow pegs. I tried to play it on long coach journeys when the school took us to see Shakespeare plays and zoos, and always got frustrated when it hit a speed bump and I nearly lost all the pieces.
'Shakespeare plays and zoos' - ah, all of life is there...
ReplyDeleteAn orange set - oooh....!