Strategy guides · Code breaking online
How to solve code breaking puzzles in fewer tries
In a code breaking puzzle you find a hidden code of colors using the feedback each guess gives you. Tintlock is Fiplay's version. A good player cracks a four-color code in five or six tries, and the method is easy to learn.
The rules
Fill a row with colors and try it. A dot means one of your colors is right and in the right spot. A ring means one of your colors is in the code, but in another spot. The marks never say which color they mean. Crack the code before you run out of tries.
1. Learn the colors first
Your first one or two tries should tell you which colors are in the code at all. Two pairs, like blue blue yellow yellow, cover two colors at once. The total of dots and rings tells you how many of those colors appear.
2. Change one or two things at a time
If you swap two pegs and a dot turns into a ring, you've learned that one of those two was in the right place. Change too much at once and you can't tell which change caused what.
3. Only play possible codes
Before each try, check your guess against every earlier row: would it have produced exactly those marks? If not, it can't be the answer, and playing it wastes a try.
4. Use the totals
Dots plus rings is the number of your colors that appear in the code. If a row of four different colors gets zero marks, none of those colors is in the code, which is just as valuable as a hit.
Common mistakes
- Reading the marks as positions. They're counts, not a map of the row.
- Forgetting that colors can repeat in the daily puzzle.
- Repeating a guess that's already ruled out by an earlier row.