Peg Solitaire Puzzle Designer Instructions

This is an online version of the classic Peg Solitaire puzzle which also allows you to design and submit puzzles for other people to challenge other people.

Peg Solitaire is an old puzzle which has been around for at least 300 years, but probably much longer. It has many names such as just "Solitaire" in the UK (as the card game is called "Patience") or in India it is known as Brainvita. The oldest known historical reference to the game is when it appeared in an engraving made in 1697.

Playing a Peg Solitaire puzzle

When you first start the game, you will see the usual GO! button. After you click this, you then enter the game selection screen. To play one of the puzzles, click on the game name that you want to play and then click the Play button. You can now play the puzzle (the name is displayed at the bottom right hand side of the screen) by drag and dropping a counter to move it. In the bottom left hand corner of the screen there is a "Diag:" counter. For puzzles where a number of diagonal hops are allowed this will show the number of diagonal moves left that you can make. If it has a zero value, then you can only hop counters either horizontally or vertically. If it has a value of "inf" then there is no restriction on how many diagonal moves you can make.

The aim of Peg Solitaire is to hop one counter over another counter on to a blank square until you only have one counter remaining on the bright red square. Every time you hop over a counter, that counter is removed from the board.

If you manage to complete the puzzle, Trixie will appear. If you get to the point where you cannot make a move then the game will finish and you can restart a new game. To start a new game at any time, click on the red "restart" button at the top right-hand corner of the game.

You can find a solution to the classic "English Board" puzzle at Wikipedia

Designing a Peg Solitaire puzzle

To design a puzzle, instead of clicking on "Play" to start a game, you can click on "design". If you don't click on a game name then you will start with a blank English Board layout. If you select a game name and then click on "design" then you will start with that puzzle layout.

On the design screen, the design icons are at the bottom of the screen. The first grey square icon can be dragged and dropped onto the grid to add or remove a board square. The counter icon can be dragged and dropped to add and remove a counter. The next icon, a red square can be dragged and dropped to add/remove the final positions of the counters required to win the game (there can be more than one). The "diags" dropdown menu allows you to set the possible number of diagonal moves.

There are also three buttons: "finish" stops the designing and returns you to the first splash screen; "submit" allows you send your design in; "play" allows you to test your puzzle by playing it. On the "submit" screen, you need to enter a game name, your name and pick a difficulty level for the game. Then press submit to send in the game. It will be added after review - usually within a few days.

The "play" test player allows you to play the puzzle and the only difference you will notice to playing a normal game is that the board square design grid will still be visible. You can return to the design screen at any time by pressing the "design" button. The "finish" button will abort the design and return you to the game splash screen.

Have fun and I look forward to seeing your designs!