Abstract
The article is a case study of a specific problem - popular board game Mastermind and its solution in Scratch, visual online programming language. Emphasis is put on the educational perspective both in the logic behind the solution itself and on the way the problem can be presented to elementary school pupils. The article is focused on logical explanation of the solution and on work with several specific programming elements, like IF-ELSE conditions, data structures and simple bug hunting feature. The difficulty is suitable for elementary school pupils as a complex task meant for superior individuals or a group of pupils. It was successfully tested as a small scale preliminary study conducted on pupils aged between 11 and 14 at an extracurricular group.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
MusÃlek, M.: Kapitoly z dÄ›jin informatiky. Gaudeamus, Hradec Kralove (2011). ISBN: 978-80-7435-129-7
Mastermind Rules. http://www.pressmantoy.com/game-rules/Mastermind_rules.pdf
Stuckman, J., Zhang, G.Q.: Mastermind is NP-Complete (2006)
Goodritch, M.T.: On the algorithmic complexity of the Mastermind game with black-peg results. Inf. Process. Lett. 109, 675–678 (2009)
Temporel, A., Kovacs, T.: A heuristic hill climbing algorithm for Mastermind. In: Proceedings of the 2003 UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence, UKCI 2003, Bristol, United Kingdom, pp. 189–196 (2003)
Kohoutek, R.: Kognitivnà vývoj dÄ›tà a Å¡kolnà vzdÄ›lávánÃ. In: Pedagogická orientace 2008, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 3–22 (2008). ISSN: 1805-9511
Rossing, J.P., Miller, W.M., Cecil, A.K., Stamper, S.E.: iLearning: the future of higher education? Student perceptions on learning with mobile tablets. J. Scholarsh. Teach. Learn. 12(2), 1–26 (2012). ISSN: 1527-9316
Scratch 3.0. In: Scratch Wiki (2017). https://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Scratch_3.0. Accessed 17 June 2017
Ganesh, S.G.: Joy of Programming: Bug Hunt (2017). http://opensourceforu.com/2011/03/joy-of-programming-bug-hunt/. Accessed 17 June 2017
Hidden Features: Turbo Mode. In: Scratch Wiki (2017). https://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Hidden_Features#Turbo_Mode. Accessed 13 June 2017
Milková, E., Petránek, K.: Programming courses reflecting students’ aptitude testing and implementing learning style preferences research results. Int. J. Math. Comput. Simul. 10, 218–225 (2016). ISSN: 2074-1316
Acknowledgments
The paper has been supported by Specific Research Project of Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Kralove, 2017 and by Specific Research Project of Faculty of Education University of Hradec Kralove, 2017.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hornik, T., Coufal, P., Musilek, M., Hubalovsky, S. (2019). A Solution of the Mastermind Board Game in Scratch Suitable for Algorithmic Thinking Development. In: Ntalianis, K., Croitoru, A. (eds) Applied Physics, System Science and Computers II. APSAC 2017. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 489. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75605-9_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75605-9_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75604-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75605-9
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)