Family Game Review: Mastermind

I’ve posted about a couple of the quarantine crafts we’ve been doing, and now it’s time to share with you one of our latest game obsessions… Mastermind!

Depending on where you buy it, it’s around $15 – 16 and WORTH EVERY PENNY!

• Here it is on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2V2cLhr
• Here it is on Target.com: https://shopstyle.it/l/bfMhD

First of off, I should point out that we did not buy Mastermind. We did a family 5k a few months ago and ended up winning a raffle item of a bunch of games:

We opened a couple of them and then just shoved the whole pile into a corner of our living room. When we started spending much more time (aka, all our time) at home, I randomly grabbed a game for us to try. It happened to be Mastermind and now our whole family is addicted to it.

Oh, and Mastermind is totally not a new game. It’s been around since 1970 and is one of the best-selling games of all time with more than 55 million games out in the world. It’s all trendy now though because it teaches STEM and STEAM principles like deductive reasoning and logic. So, yay for learning!

Game Information:

• Ages 8 and up
• 2 players
• More than 2,000 possible combinations

How to play:

One person serves at the Codemaker and the other is the Codebreaker. Technically the game is made for 2 players, but we will team up so all three of us can play.

So, the Codemaker will choose their code from the pegs. They hide the code behind the little code shield. Then, the Codebreaker will use logic to try to determine the correct code. If the Codebreakers guess has the correct color peg the correct space, they get a red indicator. If they have the correct color peg but in the wrong space, they get a white indicator.

Here’s one of our games:

We’ve basically been leaving it on our kitchen table for the last couple weeks and we will pay a game or two after dinner. I wasn’t sure if it would be too advanced for Jack, but he LOVES it. So, if you’re looking for a kinda brainy game for the whole family, I’d certainly recommend this one!

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