This page is the English 33-hole puzzle, not checkers and not the French board with four extra holes. A 7×7 square with the corners cut away leaves a cross of 33 holes. The center starts empty. Each jump removes one peg. The finish people mean by solved is a single peg in that center hole. The sections below match the buttons on the home board. Try a game if you want the wood under your hands first, or read the strategy notes when a line keeps dying.
What the cross actually is
Start from a 7×7 square and drop a 2×2 block from each corner. What remains is the cross: a bar seven holes wide and three high, with an arm of three-by-three above and below. That is 33 holes. The missing corners are not empty squares waiting for a peg. They are off the board, and a tap there does nothing.
Every hole except the center starts full: 32 pegs. The center is a landing square for the first jumps, not a second kind of piece. There is no opponent color. The pegs look alike so you can see which holes are occupied.
What counts as a move
Choose a hole that holds a peg. Along that row or that column, the next hole must hold a peg and the hole after that must be empty. You land in the empty hole. The peg in the middle is removed. Diagonals are not a direction.
One jump eats one peg and travels exactly two holes. You cannot leap two pegs, leave the cross, or land on a peg that is already there. If the hole you reached has another jump, the rules allow it, but you select again. Each click on this site is one jump, which is also how undo and replay step.
Two positions, side by side
At the start the center is empty. The peg sitting against that hole has an empty neighbor and nothing to jump, so it cannot stroll into the center. The peg that can enter the center is the one two holes out, with exactly one peg between it and the middle. A lot of first taps miss because an adjacent vacancy was treated as a landing square.
Later, on an arm: the outer peg, a peg beside it, an empty hole one step further in. That jump is good. The outer peg moves in and the middle one disappears. If the further hole is already full, or the hole between them is empty, the jump is refused even when it points toward the center.
Looks legal, is not
A diagonal gap is not a move, however short it looks. To change arms you jump horizontally, then vertically, and each of those jumps still needs a peg in the middle.
You cannot slide. An empty hole next door is not a destination unless a peg sits between you and a hole beyond it. No captured peg means no move.
A gap, then a peg, then space, is not a jump either. The captured peg has to touch the peg that jumps, and the landing hole has to touch the captured peg. Fix the shape with some other jump first.
The cut-off corners are not vacant holes. They look like open wood. There is no hole there to land in.
When the round stops
Solved means one thing: a single peg, and that peg is in the center. One peg anywhere else, or several pegs with nowhere to jump, is a stop, not a solve. While any legal jump exists, the round is still going.
Fewer pegs is not itself a win. There is no draw, because there is no second player.
The English opening can be solved. The line you happen to be on might not be a solving line. The rules do not promise a center finish. They do refuse a jump that fails the test above.
The buttons on the home page
The board is the home page. Tap a peg, then a marked empty hole: that is the jump just described. New restores 32 pegs and an empty center. Undo takes back the last jump and drops a hint that has not returned yet. Replay walks the jumps you have made, and the same button stops it.
Hint depth lives under the settings control. A deeper level searches longer and prefers moves that still reduce the board, but each request is still one jump. Nothing plays the rest of the puzzle for you. Sound starts off. There is no account, and the position in this visit is not written to a cloud save.
Questions
Is this the same rule set as checkers?
No. People sometimes use “checkers” loosely for any jumping piece. Checkers has an opponent and a turn order, and captures often chain. Here every peg is yours, each jump removes the one you passed over, and the aim is the center peg, not a cleared enemy.
Where are the extra holes from the French board?
They are not on this site. The layout is the English 33. The French cross is usually 37, with a longer tip on each arm. Do not import that starting count.
Can I jump and leave the middle peg where it is?
No. A completed jump removes it. There is no move that only slides. To put the peg back, undo the whole jump.
My last peg missed the center. Can that still count as solved?
No. The page and the board use the same test: solved means the lone center peg. Every other stop only means no jump remains.
Is the hinted jump the only correct one?
No. It is one suggestion at the depth you picked. Several jumps are often legal. Skip it if you disagree. If the center closes later, replay will show which jump did it more clearly than arguing that the hint should have been unique.
If I refresh, is the position still there?
Do not count on it. The board lives in this visit. A reload returns the opening. Sound and whether the sidebar is collapsed can stay in the browser. There is no account to sync the move list.
