Yesterday I went to local market for weekly shopping. I saw this nice bamboo bowl. I planned making a cover on this bowl and transforming it to a peg board. When I arrived to home, I saw in a shelf in my workshop the wooden cover of a broken jar. I am very lucky. Both of them has same diameter. I decided to use this cap. First I draw on computer this star shaped board. But with a standard board outside circle holes was too much far from center and I decided to make curved lines. My cap also has a curved top. After I printed my drawing and transferred it on my cap. I drilled holes and made lines with a wood burning tool. For pegs I used glass beads that I was bought a lot of them for this purpose.
This star peg solitaire has same rules with peg solitaire. You must fill all holes with pegs except one. You must play by jumping a peg over it’s neighbor into the vacant hole and than remove from the board the peg so jumped. You can jump only over one peg and you must follow lines. The aim of this puzzle is leaving one one peg on board. You can start with any empty hole that you wish. If you start with an empty hole on outside circle holes you will finish on inside circle or if you start with an empty hole on inside circle holes you will finish on outside circle. You can read more about this puzzle from George Bell’s peg solitaire page. You can view also two nice vintage puzzle example “Penta” from here and “Star solitaire” here.
But back side of my cap was empty and I decided to make another small board, And this is back side of my cap (or board). This puzzle is “Mini triangular peg solitaire“. Rules are same. You must fill all holes with pegs except one. You must play by jumping a peg over it’s neighbor into the vacant hole and than remove from the board the peg so jumped. You can jump only over one peg and you must follow lines. The aim of this puzzle also is leaving one one peg on board. But if you start only with correct empty hole you can leave one peg. You must also find correct starting hole. You can read more about this puzzle or you can see solution from here. You can see two vintage commercial example “Mini solitaire” from here and “Little triangle solitaire” from here. Thanks from here to Mr. George Bell for this two puzzle and for his website.
If you want make your own puzzle you can find easily a small bowl. My bowl has 100 mm diameter. If you can’t find something wooden you can use small porcelain or glass cups etc. For making easy covers without a lathe you can cut with a scroll saw two circle and glue them. For this method you can see my “Ball truck” or “Ball and cube” puzzles. For pegs you can cut them from 4 – 5 or 6 mm ready round wooden stocks. And you can use this image file for transferring lines on your board. You can scale it according to your board and print.
DIY Puzzles 