Peg Solitaire

How to play Peg Solitaire

Peg Solitaire is one of the world’s great one-player board games: a cross-shaped board of 33 holes, 32 pegs, and a single empty hole in the centre. Every move is a jump that removes a peg, so the board slowly empties — but one careless jump can strand pegs in corners where nothing can ever reach them. The rules take thirty seconds to learn; clearing the board down to a single centre peg is a genuine mental workout that people have been sharpening their minds on for over three centuries. This version uses the standard English board at every difficulty and runs entirely in your browser, online or offline.

The goal

Remove as many pegs as you can. A move always removes exactly one peg, so from 32 pegs, a perfect game makes 31 jumps and leaves a single peg. Your difficulty sets the winning target: on Easy you win by finishing with four pegs or fewer, on Medium with two or fewer, and on Hard you must finish with exactly one peg sitting in the centre hole — the classic “perfect solitaire”. Whatever the target, the round ends the moment no legal jump remains anywhere on the board.

The board

The board is the standard English cross: a 7×7 grid with the four 2×2 corners cut away, leaving 33 holes. At the start, every hole holds a peg except the centre hole, which is empty — that single gap is the seed from which all your jumps grow. The cross shape matters: the eight holes at the tips of the arms are notoriously easy to strand pegs in, because a peg can only leave a tip by jumping toward the middle.

How to move

• A move is a jump: pick a peg that has a neighbouring peg directly beside it and an empty hole immediately beyond that neighbour, in a straight line. Your peg hops over the neighbour and lands in the empty hole.
• Jumps are orthogonal only — up, down, left or right. Diagonal jumps are not allowed in English solitaire, and a jump is always exactly two holes long.
• The peg you jumped over is removed from the board. Every legal move therefore reduces the peg count by exactly one; there is no other way to remove a peg.
• The cut-away corners are not holes: a jump may never start from, pass over, or land outside the cross. Tap a peg to select it — its legal landing holes light up as green dots. Tap a dot to jump, or tap another peg to switch your selection.
• The Undo button takes back your last jump (and you can keep undoing all the way to the start). Solitaire is a game of experimentation — undo freely while you learn the classic clearing patterns.

Winning and ending

The round ends automatically when no peg can make any legal jump. If the pegs remaining meet your difficulty’s target, the banner declares a win; otherwise the round is over and you can study what went wrong. Either way your score is calculated and submitted, so even a near miss counts on the leaderboard. Fewer pegs always beats a faster time, so never stop early while a jump exists.

A little history

Legend places the game’s invention with a French aristocrat imprisoned in the Bastille in the late 17th century, passing the years by jumping pegs on a board. What is certain is that in 1687 an engraving showed Madame la Princesse de Soubise posing beside a solitaire board at the court of Louis XIV, and the puzzle swept the French nobility. The 33-hole cross used here became the standard “English” board, while a 37-hole version stayed popular in France. Mathematicians later proved elegant results about the game — including that the classic centre-start, centre-finish clearance needs at least 18 “sweeps” and that a full solution takes exactly 31 jumps.

Strategy tips

• Work in one region at a time. Good players clear the board in “packages” — small blocks of three or six pegs that can be swept away by a peg stationed next to them — rather than jumping randomly all over the cross.
• Watch the arm tips. A peg at the end of an arm can only escape by jumping toward the centre, and only if the middle of the arm is arranged just right. Empty the tips early, before their escape routes disappear.
• Do not let lone pegs get separated. A peg with no neighbours can never move again and can never be captured — one isolated peg on Easy is survivable, but on Hard it ends your perfect game instantly.
• Think one jump backwards. Before you jump, ask what the landing peg will be able to do next; the strongest moves land a peg where it immediately threatens another jump, keeping a single “worker” peg sweeping through the board.
• On Hard, plan the finish first. The final jump must land in the centre, so the last two pegs must sit in line with the centre hole. Many players memorise the final four-move pattern and steer the whole game toward it.

Frequently asked questions