Code Breaker is a game of clues and deduction. The computer hides a row of colored pegs, you guess a row, and a few small pins tell you how close you are.

How to play

The goal is to find the hidden row before you run out of tries.

Making a guess: tap the colored pegs below the board to fill a row from left to right. Every color also has its own shape inside the peg, such as a circle, a star or a leaf, so you can tell the colors apart without relying on color alone. When the row is full, press Check.
Black pins: each black pin means one peg is the right color in the right place.
White pins: each white pin means one peg is a right color, but in the wrong place.
No pin: a peg with no pin is a color that is not in the hidden row at all, or one that you have already counted.
The catch: the pins do not say which peg they belong to. You have to work that out from the pattern of your guesses.

On a phone, tap the pegs with your finger and use Delete to remove the last one. On a computer, the keys 1 to 9 pick colors in order, Backspace deletes a peg, and Enter checks the row.

Your earlier guesses stay on the board with their pins. Read them again before every new guess, because the answer is hiding in the whole list, not in the last row alone. The Hint button shows the true peg at one place in the hidden row.

The levels

The levels change the length of the row, the number of colors, the tries and the rules about repeats.

Easy: 4 pegs, 6 colors and 10 tries. Every color is used only once in the hidden row. You have 2 hints.
Medium: 4 pegs, 6 colors and 10 tries. A color may be used more than once. You have 2 hints.
Hard: 5 pegs, 7 colors and 8 tries. A color may repeat. You have 1 hint.
Expert: 5 pegs, 8 colors and 6 tries. The row can also hold empty holes, and an empty hole never earns a pin, so you find them by elimination. You have 1 hint.

You can lose on every level. If your last try is wrong, the game shows you the hidden row.

Today's game

The daily game is a Medium puzzle. Everyone who plays on the same calendar day tries to crack the same hidden row, and the result records whether you won and how many tries you used.

Tips

Do not guess at random. After each set of pins, choose a row that could still be the answer. Every guess should agree with all of the pins you have seen so far.
Use your first guess to learn about colors. Black and white pins added together tell you how many of that row's colors are in the hidden row.
Count the pins. If the black and white pins together add up to the length of the row, you have the right colors and only the order is left to find.
If the total is zero, none of those colors are in the hidden row. Cross all of them out for the rest of the game.
Change one thing at a time. Swap two pegs, or replace one color, and see how the pins change. The difference tells you something.
On Medium and above, one color can fill several places. Do not drop a color just because you saw a single pin for it.
Save hints for the end. Use one when only a couple of possible rows remain and you cannot tell them apart.

A bit of history

Games of guessing a hidden code and learning only how many pieces are right and in the right place go back a long way, and a version with digits on paper has been played for generations.

Questions

Do black and white pins mean a particular peg? No. The pins are in no special order. They only count how many pegs are in each category.

Can the hidden row hold the same color twice? On Easy it never does. On Medium, Hard and Expert it can.

What is an empty hole on Expert? It is one more thing a peg can be. It never earns a pin, so you learn about empty holes by elimination.

Is the daily row the same for everyone? Yes. Everyone who plays on a given day faces the same hidden row.

Code Breaker