Ultimate Mastermind

This is a really cool set. Well built and priced very well. My 6 year old son had grown out of the basic mastermind sets with just five colours and three-pin combinations and this set provides added difficulty with eight colours and five-pin combinations.

We love this game, it is very mind stimulating and you get to see how the person strategies in their thinking so play it often.In terms of production design may I suggest that the "code maker" red and white tags be divided in the set on the code makers side rather than the code breakers side? In the present design the code maker has to reach over the color pegs in order to reach the red and white pegs, if you divided it on the opposite side it would be easier for the code maker to select the "red or white" tags.

The game is fine. Nice having extra colors. My 8 and 9yr old kids can get each others pattern within 5 moves every time - but they like strategy games and play them often.Pros: extra colors, decent board, classic set-upCons: need tweezers to get the marking pieces out of the container, this wasn't designed for human fingers, container separator wall is too low so the different types of pieces get mixed up constantly, "new ways of playing" is not really that great of an idea. Some of the colors are very similar, and some other colors that would have been easy to use are not represented. Not sure why this happened. Carry handle is pointless because the door that covers the pegs does not secure - if you picked it up by the handle, the pegs would all spill on the floor, and also just tipping it up mixes all the different pegs.This is a classic game I thought my kids would like. They did. I like to play it with them. The board is set up in the classic style where you mark adjacent and in the same direction as the guesses. Some of the newer versions have marking set up perpendicular to the guesses which would drive me nuts.All-in-all if you are looking for the game Mastermind that you played as a child, then this is it. Just ignore the "new" stuff that doesn't work anyway.

We had the original Mastermind with a 4-part code. That one was appallingly bad for a brand name item. The hood which covered the code kept falling off. The compartment that held the pieces didn't latch closed. The small pegs didn't fit in the holes.This game fixes all those issues! All the parts stay put, fit right, and close tightly. And if you don't want to play a 5-part code, you can just use 4 spots. The only thing I'd wish they would change is the lid for the peg compartment. When it's open, it hangs over the board that's in use. You have to close it after each peg you take. If the hinge was on the other side, and it opened away from the board, that would be better.

I grew up playing this game, and I absolutely love it. The game itself is great, however, the reason this product is getting only 3 stars is because of the quality of the game and the way it is set up. The whole game is made very cheap, with thin, light plastic. Also, the compartment to hold all the pieces, was not thought out very well. It's door opens to lay on top of the game vs. it opening to the opposite side. So, you basically have to pull all the pieces you want out, before each turn otherwise the door is blocking the game. Its not a big deal, but pretty annoying when the door could have just been flipped around and it would have made much more sense. All in all, it's a great game. It's just made cheap & oddly laid out.

Wow, am I disappointed.I'm a big Mastermind fan. I've been playing this game since the mid '70s, when the game first took off here in the United States. I own several different versions of the game. (Regular Mastermind, Improved Mastermind, Super Mastermind, all by Invicta, Advanced Mastermind by Pressman, etc., etc.)This version here is by far the worst of all the versions I've seen. It's terrible. I bought it just to have a copy of it, to complete my collection, and now I regret doing so.The plastic is lightweight and "cheap."The board is quite small... it's just about 2/3s the length of the Super Mastermind board sold in the '70s.The code pegs are tiny... about half the size of the code peg from the earlier versions.The score indicator goes up to just 10. Compare this to 71 from the earlier versions!I suppose the built-in handle is a new feature, but if you keep the game stored in the box, you aren't using the handle anyway. And when using the handle, the feedback pegs and the code pegs get mixed up... the compartment that holds each of the pegs spill into one another!Good things: The rules ARE in color and include examples of how to score. That's an improvement, since I know the rules from the early versions didn't include examples. But that's about it.Overall, it's a terrible product. I say that not to be mean or to belittle the company, but because it's the truth. The older sets are much, MUCH nicer to use and play a game on.I consider this product just another example of products that seem to get worse over time. I'm sure it's MUCH cheaper for the company to make and produce this version than it was to make and produce the older versions, but it's also a much cheaper product as a result.If you want a Mastermind game that supports 5 holes and 8 colors (Often called Super Mastermind) then go online to eBay and purchase a used set, which are readily available, probably for less than the cost of this new version. This version is made by Pressman, and even Pressman themselves made a product called Advanced Mastermind, that is much better than this version.