Cipher is a free online Mastermind-style code-breaking puzzle — for fans of Mastermind and Wordle who enjoy deduction-feedback shapes. A secret sequence of colored pegs is hidden — your job is to deduce it within 10 guesses, no download required.
Cipher is not a plain Mastermind clone. Each game grants you a small bank of Probes — a limited deduction power-up shown in the HUD above the board.
After each guess, Cipher shows filled white pegs (exact position match) and outline white pegs (right color, wrong position) alongside the row. The feedback does not map positionally to your guess slots — just count the filled and outline pegs to narrow down possibilities.
Daily mode gives a 4-peg code with 6 distinct colors (no duplicates). One puzzle per calendar day, shared globally. Infinite mode uses a 5-peg code drawn from 8 colors with duplicates allowed — vastly harder with 32,768 possible codes.
Not in Daily mode — the 4 pegs always use 4 distinct colors. In Infinite mode duplicates are allowed; the feedback algorithm handles them correctly, allocating each color match only once.
The Probe is Cipher's signature power-up: 2 per game in Infinite, 1 in Daily. Tap PROBE, then click a peg position. Cipher reports how many of the still-hidden positions share that position's secret color — a count only, never the color itself. It is a deduction aid, not a giveaway. A Probe does not use a guess row, the remaining count shows in the HUD, and Probes reset each new game.
No. Probes are never persisted, so the once-per-day localStorage lock is untouched — a probed Daily still submits exactly once on first completion and scores by the normal (11 − attempts) × 100 formula. The Probe is a strategy aid, not an exploit.
The daily code uses a seeded RNG with a seed derived from the calendar date. The same date produces the same seed worldwide, so every player gets an identical puzzle regardless of timezone.