Friday, May 10, 2013

Giveaway: Getting Our Game On With Mastermind

Growing up my parents were very particular about the kinds of toys and games I played with and I guess you'd call most of the games I played "brain games." While I tired of being made fun of for not having the latest electronic game little did I know how well these types of games would serve me later in life building my reasoning and logic skills! One of my favorite games I played growing up was Mastermind  - we had the old school version laying on the table below with the couple on the box. When I attended Toy Fair 2013 seeing that box instantly brought back memories of my childhood!

I was so excited to see the game updated for modern times and was happy when Pressman sent a game so I could introduce it to Mr. Love Bird as he'd never played before. 


Mastermind is a 2-player game: one is the codemaker (Mr. Love Bird) and the other is the codebreaker (me). The object is for the codebreaker to break the code in as few tries as possible matching the codemaker's code with the exact color sequence hidden behind the partition.

No peeking!

The codemaker then assesses each row's attempt with white or red pegs indicating right color/wrong placement or right color/right placement, respectively. The trick is to strategize and change the color position carefully each time so the code is broken as quickly as possible. The hard part is each of the holes the red and white pegs go into do not correspond to a peg position - the codebreaker has to figure it out.

The face of a winner!
You can see above I broke the code in 3 tries - not typical - and Mr. Love Bird was convinced I peeked, but I promise you I didn't! Typically it takes us almost to the very end of the board to break the code. You can play in rounds too and keep score and even do a tournament if there are more than 2 players - believe me it can get super competitive! (You can view the full rules here.)

Want to give Mastermind a try? One lucky winner will win one via my Rafflecopter giveaway below. As always my giveaways have one mandatory entry with the rest being optional. 

Giveaway ends on Thursday, May 16 with the winner being announced Friday, May 17. Open to U.S. residents only.  

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway