Triangular Peg Solitaire Unlimited

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility of ending triangular peg solitaire games with a single peg sweeping all remaining pegs, demonstrating solutions for various board sizes and methods to minimize moves.

Contribution

It introduces constructions for long final sweeps on larger boards and methods to minimize total moves in triangular peg solitaire.

Findings

Longest sweeps occur as final moves on boards of side 6 and 8

Solutions for arbitrarily long sweeps on larger boards

Strategies to minimize total moves in gameplay

Abstract

Triangular peg solitaire is a well-known one-person game or puzzle. When one peg captures many pegs consecutively, this is called a sweep. We investigate whether the game can end in a dramatic fashion, with one peg sweeping all remaining pegs off the board. For triangular boards of side 6 and 8 (with 21 and 36 holes, respectively) the geometrically longest sweep can occur as the final move in a game. On larger triangular boards, we demonstrate how to construct solutions that finish with arbitrarily long sweeps. We also consider the problem of finding solutions that minimize the total number of moves (where a move is one or more consecutive jumps by the same peg).