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Show HN: BreakLock – A hybrid of Mastermind and the Android pattern lock

maxwellito.github.io

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Re: Show HN: BreakLock – A hybrid of Mastermind and the Android pattern lock

#3

Post by elaus »

Solved the first puzzle on "easy" in 53 attempts. The first 20 attempts were me figuring out that the 4 dots beneath each try are not in the same order as I drew the pattern, so I can't directly deduce if a single dot is correct or not. Then it took me another ~8 attempts to find the four correct dots and then a very long time to get the order right.

Fun game, interesting idea and nicely done! I'll probably play a few more rounds when I get home.

Re: Show HN: BreakLock – A hybrid of Mastermind and the Android pattern lock

#4

Post by Spare_account »

_v7gu wrote: post #2

Pretty neat. Is there some kind of "strategy guide" for mastermind-like games? I feel that I'm operating at close-to-brute-force levels (I spent 22 attempts at a 4-lock) and I'd love to get better

I don't know the answer to your question, but I was curious to know if 22 attempts was anywhere near a bruteforce attack on a 4 point pattern.

This Quora thread contains some interesting breakdowns of the number of possible patterns that Android permits.

https://www.quora.com/Android-operating-system-How-many-comb...

If we assume that you don't know the number of points in use on a phone you're trying to unlock, the consensus seems to be there are in the region of 390,000 distinct patterns. One correspondent doubled that.

In the case where you know the pattern has 4 points, the number of valid permutations was calculated to be 1624. Your 22 attempt crack is well short of that figure so I think you are being harsh on yourself by implying you basically just got lucky. You're good at this!

Re: Show HN: BreakLock – A hybrid of Mastermind and the Android pattern lock

#5

Post by M4v3R »

_v7gu wrote: post #2

Pretty neat. Is there some kind of "strategy guide" for mastermind-like games? I feel that I'm operating at close-to-brute-force levels (I spent 22 attempts at a 4-lock) and I'd love to get better

Yeah, as Spare_account said, 22 attempts is probably a pretty good result for a first try at the game. I needed 60 :).

Re: Show HN: BreakLock – A hybrid of Mastermind and the Android pattern lock

#7

Post by fabrixxm »

elaus wrote: post #3

Solved the first puzzle on "easy" in 53 attempts. The first 20 attempts were me figuring out that the 4 dots beneath each try are not in the same order as I drew the pattern, so I can't directly deduce if a single dot is correct or not. Then it took me another ~8 attempts to find the four correct dots and then a very long time to get the order right. Fun game, interesting idea and nicely done! I'll probably play a fe…

~53 attempts on first try too.. second try I was lucky and solved in 9...

nice time-waster :-)

Re: Show HN: BreakLock – A hybrid of Mastermind and the Android pattern lock

#9

Post by vanilla »

_v7gu wrote: post #2

Pretty neat. Is there some kind of "strategy guide" for mastermind-like games? I feel that I'm operating at close-to-brute-force levels (I spent 22 attempts at a 4-lock) and I'd love to get better

I think trying to exclude nodes is more efficient than trying to find the correct ones.

After you excluded all "bad" nodes, you need to find the order. finding the order with the help of "bad" nodes was also faster for me

I went from 56 to a lucky 5 tries.

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