Peg Solitaire

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Jump one peg over another into an empty hole and remove the peg you jumped over. Click a peg to select it, then click an empty hole two spaces away in a straight line — horizontal or vertical only. The centre hole starts empty. Goal: finish with one peg left in the centre. Turn hints on to see valid jumps highlighted in green.

Peg solitaire on the English board — the cross-shaped pattern of 33 holes — has been played since at least the 17th century and was popularised in France as solitaire before spreading across Europe. Mathematicians have studied it as a problem in combinatorics: each position of the pegs is a state, and each jump is a move to a new state. Not every finishing position is possible from the standard start; in fact, only certain holes can hold the last peg, and the centre is among them. The puzzle is a natural introduction to systematic search, invariants and proof by exhaustion at KS3 — students can record positions, look for dead ends, and ask whether a path to a single centre peg exists without needing algebra.