How to solve the Color puzzle boxes?

Title says it all, any specific tricks? I always seem to go about it by randomly guessing.

It’s a logic puzzle, I can usually breeze through most of them…, and some I think are impossible…although perhaps perfect play would get the answers…

The first step is to figure out the correct colors, worry about the order later.

I usually go all red. then change some to green depending on the reply, then blue, yellow. Hard to explain next part, just logic, I think there are some guides elsewhere in the forum…

or just google tips on solving mastermind.

no of these puzzles are impossible…

solution for the puzzle within 4 Steps:
http://helios.wh2.tu-dresden.de/~jooschi/boxlist.txt

the colors are abbr. by numbers:
0:=red
1:=green
2:=blue
3:=yellow

start at the top:

0[0, 0] => try [0,0,1,2] means to test: red,red,green,blue

then look at your result: e.g. C=2, P=0, so you go down to:
1[2, 0] => try [0, 3, 0, 3]
^the leeding 1 shows that we had one try yet

test: red,yellow,red,yellow
result: C=1, P=1, so you go down to:
2[1, 1] => try [0, 0, 0, 1]

test: red,red,red,blue
result: C=0, P=1, so you go down to:
3[0, 1] => (3, 3, 1, 2)

round brackets announce solutions (if there are 2 solutions are listed: try one and in case of failure the other)

hope that helps you a bit ;)

ps: is there a need of redesign the solution more clearly?

Actually,I have a method that helps me solve about 90% of the Colour Puzzle Boxes.

First,put all buttons to Blue.
Second,test each button one by one e.g. 1st Green rest Blue
Third,If no P comes out (means colour is in wrong column）don’t care about green any more,and try other colours.

It’s a bit hard to explain,but it works for me.=)

Originally posted by jooschi:

no of these puzzles are impossible…

solution for the puzzle within 4 Steps:

http://helios.wh2.tu-dresden.de/~jooschi/boxlist.txt

the colors are abbr. by numbers:

0:=red

1:=green

2:=blue

3:=yellow

start at the top:

0[0, 0] => try [0,0,1,2] means to test: red,red,green,blue

then look at your result: e.g. C=2, P=0, so you go down to:

1[2, 0] => try [0, 3, 0, 3]

^the leeding 1 shows that we had one try yet

test: red,yellow,red,yellow

result: C=1, P=1, so you go down to:

2[1, 1] => try [0, 0, 0, 1]

test: red,red,red,blue

result: C=0, P=1, so you go down to:

3[0, 1] => (3, 3, 1, 2)

round brackets announce solutions (if there are 2 solutions are listed: try one and in case of failure the other)

hope that helps you a bit ;)

ps: is there a need of redesign the solution more clearly?

Good indeed… Finally someone that had patience to make suck a scheme.. :)