"Pegs" is a game that has been around for decades. You've probably played it when you've eaten at Cracker Barrel, where you try your wits against that golf ball tee triangle game! So...can you do it? or are you "Just plain dumb!"? LOL

The article for this game can be found on page 52 of Compute's Gazette Issue 42 (December 1986)

Yep. But that is a maximum score run. I feel this game also presents an any % option.

While the main goal of the game is to continue jumping pegs until there is only one left (for the best performance), the mechanics of the game provide for end-points (conditions where further play is not possible) other than with only 1 remaining peg. These aren't technically losses, they are just lower score end-points. In the above mentioned "Cracker Barrel" versions, the game tells you how smart you are based on your performance.

Basically, any point at which no further moves can be made is a valid end-point for the game albeit one with a less than maximum score. Given that there are 29,760 ways to end the game with only one peg when the starting hole is at the top of the pyramid, including the number of other endpoints drastically increases the number of possible end-points to this game (no, I haven't figured out what that number is) to 598,390.

So how could one go about figuring out the the shortest possible game? Ultimately, it would require figuring out what is the shortest number of moves that reaches a valid end-point, then (because the various sequences of play occur at different speeds, as nymx found) testing every one of the possible sequences with that shortest number to determine which is actually fastest. This initially sounds kind of daunting.

Thankfully, other (smarter than me) people have already figured out that the shortest number of moves to reach an end-point is only 6 moves when the hole starts at a point on the pyramid, as in our game here. Even better is that there are only 2 total sequences of 6-move playthroughs; the one presented in this TAS and its horizontally mirror image sequence. Due to this, TASing this run became fairly easy and didn't require the botting that nymx had to do. It only required manually testing the two possibilities of which, this TAS was my first attempt. The mirror image sequence is slower.

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.

ThunderAxe31: At first I wondered if this goal should be considered as beating the game or just as a "fastest gameover" thing. By playing the game casually, I could see that getting the lowest score possible actually poses some challenge, and on top of that the author did it as fast as possible. Also, it's not like the game tells you that you failed, but it's just not telling you that you've won, as for the maximum score movie, which I consider as a sort of "best ending" version.

I also wondered if this submission should be considered as "lowest score", but I don't think it would be descriptive, as it collides with the fastest completion goal, which I think it should take priority, so I guess te branch label should remain blank. If in doubt, ask feos.

Accepting as a new branch, for fastest completion.

despoa: Processing...