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Mastermind

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Mastermind was a board game which, if I remember rightly, didn't bear much resemblence to the television programme of the same name.

The idea of the Mastermind game was to guess an unknown sequence of coloured pegs in the fewest number of attempts possible.

The Mastermind box artwork is as well remembered as the game itself and had a picture of a bearded gentleman sat in a kind of James Bond baddie pose with a young oriental woman stood at his shoulder.

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Do You Remember Mastermind?

Do You Remember Mastermind?

  • Anonymous user
    on
    OK, I know this sounds weird but I was at my grandparent's house at one point and they have an extensive version. It's for three players, I think it needs scored and there were definitely cards with coloured shapes on them. If only I'd been paying more attention! I shall see if I can find it online somewhere...
  • Anonymous user
    on
    I used to play this in the 70s with my dad. We both liked logic type puzzles and games. The BBC game was called Master Brain, but was a quiz game, I don't remember there being a board game part of it. It came with question cards on "Specialist Subjects" and general knowledge.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    My friend Jill had this game at her camp. We spent an afternoon playing it, but I'm sure we didn't follow the rules. I'm also sure we never once guessed the sequence in time.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    Right up there with Rubik's cube, chess etc. - fantastic game, a variation of which I play on the net called 'Bulls 'n'Cows'.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    My most vivid memory is of playing this with my mother, when I was 14 or 15. I was the one trying to guess the combination of colours, and after about ten rows, it just wasn't making sense. So I thought some more, and finally asked her to check her response to one of the early rows. She did so, and gave me a Look, before correcting her black and white pegs - me telling her she had made a mistake was one thing (I did it rather a lot, obnoxious little brat that I was), but telling her the exact row where she'd made it seemed to unnerve her.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    The boxed game was actually called "Master Mind" not "Mastermind". This must have annoyed the BBC who had to put put their board game based on the quiz show under another name, which I think was "Supermind". The coloured-pegs game was just a costly version of a pencil-and-paper game which I knew at school as Balls and Maggots but seems to also be called Bulls and Cows and other names. Battleships is another good example of a game you could play for nothing on paper or could pay several pounds to play on plastic.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    Who can forget the pimpy science guy on the box for this game. My sister, Robin, and I would play this for ages. I was rubbish then and I'm rubbish now but I still had a lot of fun. But the dude on the box, said to me, cryptologists get the hot chicks! As it turns out very little action happens in the crypto department nowadays at least. Damn box.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    Yeah, I've played that game a few times---it's fun and I'm quite good at it. And yes, I quite vividly remember that picture on the box because it's pretty eerie imo.

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