Over the holidays, amidst the glorious, empty time at the end of December, I spent some solid (& uncounted) hours playing Mastermind with my kids. Actually, we have a knockoff version called Code Breaker, whose name is a lot more explicit and clear than the original. Much like generic cereals that call themselves Oat O’s instead of Cheerios, or Crispy Rice instead of Rice Krispies, it’s unadorned clarity at its finest, and would bring a smile to a Swiss train engineer as he sees a train pulling into the station with millisecond punctuality.
Okay that was a massive digression and I’m only in the second paragraph. Back to the show. Code née Mastermind involves two players, a board, and a bunch of pegs featuring the colours of the rainbow plus a few more. One person (the codemaker) sets a sequence of pegs which the codebreaker can’t see, and the codebreaker needs to figure out what the code is. Crucially, the codemaker provides more feedback than “yes/no”. The codemaker uses a black peg to indicate that the codebreaker has put the right colour is in the right position, and the codemaker uses a white peg if the codebreaker placed the right colour in the wrong position. If the codebreaker places a peg that’s entirely the wrong colour in entirely the wrong position, they get neither black nor white peg and can cry themselves all the way home.
Actually, instead of crying themselves all way home the codebreaker can just take their next turn, incorporating the feedback from your first attempt.
There’s a twist of good science in the game design that I really appreciate. Even if you place all the wrong colours on your first attempt, you receive clear feedback and can eliminate those colours from your future efforts. You benefit from what I used to frequently hear Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke call the successful discovery of something that didn’t work.
As the game proceeds, the codebreaker gradually narrows down their choice of colour and position until their code matches the codemaker’s code, and then they crack a bottle of ginger ale, set off some roman candles, dance a quick jig, and begin the next round.
The game is fun, and if you’re seeking a nice way to pass the time in a moderately focused way with a person you like or love, Mastermind is for you.
I’d like to think they’ll use this as a marketing tag-line on their packaging, but somehow I doubt they will. If you ever see this catchy line on a future Mastermind or Code Breaker package, please let me know and I can sue them and share my winnings with you.
Again, back to the show: where the real-life insight emerges is in the strategy of how you play the game, particularly around how you play your first turn. I imagine there are people who’ve done their PhD dissertations on the optimal combinations for winning in the fewest steps, but I’m going with the hey-chill-the-F-out-it’s-a-game approach, and share the strategy I developed in a few hours against opponents no older than 7 years of age:
Don’t calculate, just do it. Place your first-turn pegs, don’t consider it for any longer than it takes to place the pegs.
For one thing, I had an impatient codemaker staring my down from the other side of the board. But more generally, it doesn’t really matter what you do on your first turn. You’ll get information no matter what you do, and then you can refine your code based on that information. Eventually you’ll find your way to the solution. (I think the only caveat is that putting only one colour on the first turn will yield less information if you picked a wrong colour. You’ll know not to use that one again, but you could have learned more).
How many creative projects or job prospects or new relationships have you deliberated about, sitting there with a handful of coloured pegs and wondering their ideal order … and taking months or years or ever to put them in place? I’m guilty of this in all sorts of ways. The great thing about good game design is how clearly we can work out life lessons with a handful of coloured pegs and a 7-year-old codemaker staring us down.
Of course, every metaphor has its limits and the main objection with this one, or really any game-as-life comparison is that the stakes are way different. Here we’re talking about a few coloured pegs and there aren’t really any consequences to getting it wrong. In life there’s like, pride and financial security and all those other things. I have to partially agree and can assure you I’m not playing the pegs of my life with the same reckless abandon of my first turn in Mastermind. But I’ll bet there are people who break out in a cold sweat on their first Mastermind turn as they deliberate permutations and combinations endlessly. And still, any good metaphor will stick around even if we know its limits. The approach of placing pegs, looking for feedback, and dispassionately iterating until you find the solution is a great example to aim for in non-peg-related endeavours.
(An obvious real-life trap showed up in Mastermind over my holiday sojourn, when playing with my 3-year-old son who has an obsessive preference for blue. No amount of feedback could sway him from his all-blue sequences. The game might not be for him just yet. He’s not ready for dispassionate iteration just yet, and neither are many of us adults).
Once the pieces are in place – whether that’s project or job or a new scheme for organizing your kitchen spices – that 7-year-old codemaker that we call “the world” will quickly provide feedback. Parts of your attempt are working, parts of it aren’t. No problemo: onto round 2, onto round 3, eventually find your solution, crack that ginger ale, set off the fireworks and dance your quick jig, then clear the board and start again.