Strategy Tips

[CroutonJohn]

I've been playing this game for a few weeks, and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong! In a typical game, I'm figuring a few things out, crossing out number I know I can eliminate, figuring out a few colors. I'm about 1/3 of the way to breaking the code-- and then someone breaks the code and the game is over! I wasn't even close! I'm obviously missing something, but I can't find any posts or tutorials online talking about the strategies.

Especially elusive is how to figure out all the colors. I've had several times where I've got all the digits, and have one or two vague clues like "number of black numbers: 2," and "number of adjacent tiles with same color: 3," I can figure out one or two tile colors from those.... and then someone solves the puzzle! How is everyone else solving the puzzle after just a few rounds?

Help!

[lulubelle23]

Hello!

I'd be happy to play through a game with you and have voice chat on to tell you what I'm doing and why and answer any questions that come up...if that's of interest to you, pm me and we can find a time to play a game together.

[Sombracier]

watch the replay from your opponent view, it may be instructive

[Maxav_]

Hello!

I'd be happy to play through a game with you and have voice chat on to tell you what I'm doing and why and answer any questions that come up...if that's of interest to you, pm me and we can find a time to play a game together.

I would like too please !

[MRD90]

You might be making poor choices in your questions. I normally play 2 player (and have the game physically as well), and I've found a few questions to be more insightful than you might think.

1) Location of sequential digits.

Since digits are forced to be in ascending order, this tells you a little bit about all of the digits at once. You can often combine this with more localized information (like sums of subsets) to narrow down digit possibilities.

Unfortunately, since I also play physically, am am plagued by my mother constantly screwing up for answer to this one. More than once (and I've only had the game 2 weekends with them) I've been pulling my hair out over an impossible code only to find out she gave me the wrong answer to this. Not a problem on BGA, just wanted to vent.

2) Location of neighboring digits with same color.

Another one that provides global information. If you get a large run of color (like ABC are same color), a good follow up is to look for "how many tiles are <color>", which can let you lock down the colors of a large portion of the tiles at once.

If you get no sets, or only one small set, a good followup can be to check for locations of 5s. If there are 5s in the code, you've knocked out those tiles completely and partitioned the code, so you know you need more color information. If there's no 5s, you can lock down the color pattern completely, and it's now 50/50 whether it's B&W or W&B.

3) Difference of highest and lowest digit.

If you get a high value, it highly constrains the values the first and last tile can have. If it's 9 for example, you know you have 0/9 tiles in play. If it's low, it doesn't constrain the outer tiles as much, but contains the inner tiles to be in a narrower band of values. You can combine that with "sum of <set>" information to restrict the range of the digits even further.