Peg Solitaire Challenge Generator

What this generator does

Builds challenges backwards: it starts from one peg and repeatedly undoes a jump, putting two pegs back and emptying a hole, until the chosen number of pegs is on the board. Played forwards, those steps are a solution. A sheet holds four challenges, none the same as another when the board is turned or reflected. The traditional full-board starts come with solutions found once by a complete search and stored. Every solution shown is replayed from its printed form by a separate check.

How to use this tool

1. Choose a board and a start: few, more or many pegs, or the full board.
2. Press Make the challenges. Press a peg and then a hole marked with a bold circle, or choose a jump from the list.
3. Undo or start again at any time; step through a solution if stuck; print the challenges and solutions.

Understanding the controls

Board

English (33 holes in a cross), European (37, the cross with four extra holes) or the 15-hole triangle, where pegs also jump along the slanting lines.

Start

Few, more or many pegs (6, 10 or 15 on the square boards; 5, 8 or 11 on the triangle), or the full board with one hole empty.

Finish on a ringed hole

Built challenges can ask for the last peg to end in a ringed hole, which is harder than finishing anywhere.

Seed

The same seed and settings make the same sheet while the generator is unchanged. Not a secret.

Worked examples

The triangle's first jumps

With hole 1 empty, only 4 → 1 and 6 → 1 are possible. After 4 → 1, holes 2 and 4 are empty and the jumps are 9 → 2, 6 → 4, 11 → 4 and 13 → 4: 7 → 2 is not, because hole 4 is now empty.

Solving tip

Avoid stranding a peg far from the others: a peg with no neighbour can never be jumped over or jump again.

Common use cases

• A quiet one-player puzzle at a table, or on a board at home
• Short warm-up challenges for a class or club before the full board
• Checking a solution to the traditional English board, one jump at a time

How this generator works

A jump needs a peg, a peg next to it and an empty hole beyond, all in a straight line: along rows and columns on the square boards, and also along the two slanting directions on the triangle. Undoing a jump needs a peg with two empty holes behind it in a line. The check reads the printed start and steps, works out the jumped-over hole as the midpoint of each step, and tests every rule again from scratch, ending with a single peg (on the ring, if asked). Two sheets are compared after turning and reflecting the board, eight ways for the square boards and six for the triangle.

Randomness and fairness

Built challenges come from the browser's secure generator, or a seeded one when you type a seed. Seeds are deterministic, not cryptographic, and not a secret. The full-board starts are fixed.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

• Every game ends with one jump fewer than the starting pegs, so the number of jumps in a solution is fixed by the start.

Limitations and good to know

• The solution shown is not claimed to be unique or shortest; others may exist.
• Difficulty is not measured: more pegs means a longer game, not necessarily a harder one.
• Three boards only; no diagonal-jump variants of the square boards.

Common mistakes

Jumping diagonally on a square board

On the English and European boards jumps go across or up and down only.

Jumping over an empty hole or two pegs

A jump passes over a single peg into the hole right behind it.

Privacy and your data

Challenges are made and played in your browser. With analytics consent, a count records how many challenges a sheet had; the seed and your moves are not sent.