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For the longest time, playing board games has been linked with the development of the mind, especially in young people. According to Dr. Gwen Dewar of Parenting Science, games such as chess and Mastermind help hone a person's logical-mathematical intelligence - brilliance that is often found in scientists, mathematicians and investigators. The history of games dates to the ancient human past. Games are an integral part of all cultures and are one of the oldest form of human social interaction. Games are formalized expressions of play which allow people to go beyond immediate imagination and direct physical activity. A board game is a game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games can be based on pure strategy, chance (e.g. rolling dice), or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal that a player aims to achieve. While the board gaming market is estimated to be smaller than that for video games, it has also experienced significant growth from the late 1990s. A dedicated field of research into gaming exists, known as game studies or ludology. While there has been a fair amount of scientific research on the psychology of older board games (e.g., chess, Go, mancala), less has been done on contemporary board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Risk. Research studies show that board games such as Chutes and Ladders result in children showing significant improvements in aspects of basic number skills such as counting, recognizing numbers, numerical estimation and number comprehension.

Mastermind resembles a game that was mainstream prior many years. It was named as Bulls and Cows. It includes two players who are included in interpreting the purported codes of one another. Mordecai Meirowitz developed this game in the year 1970. Mordecai was a famous Israeli telecom master and an acting postmaster! Mordecai Meirowitz is considered as a Board Game geek by many. Game of the year (1973), Design Center Award and Queen's Award for Export Achievement are three of the major recognition awards won by this wonderful board game!

Mastermind is a very unique game in its own right, which is played utilizing a disentangling board. This board has a shield toward one side covering a line of four vast openings, and twelve (or ten, or eight, or six) extra lines containing four extensive gaps beside an arrangement of four little gaps. Also, code pegs of six (or more) distinctive colors, with round heads, which will be set in the expansive gaps on the board are needed. Finally, key pegs, some shaded dark, some white, which are level headed and littler than the code pegs are required to be put in the little gaps on the board. There are 1296 different ways of choosing four pegs, where each one is chosen from six colours.(6x6x6x6 = 1296 ways).

The two players decide in advance how many games they will play, which must be an even number. One player becomes the code-maker, the other the code-breaker. The code-maker chooses a pattern of four code pegs. Duplicates are allowed, so the player could even choose four code pegs of the same color. The chosen pattern is placed in the four holes covered by the shield, visible to the code-maker but not to the code-breaker. The code-breaker may have a very hard time finding out the code.

Now the actual game of 'cat and mouse' begins. Twelve (may be even ten or eight) turns is the thing that the Code-breaker gets the chance to disentangle the arrangement conveyed by his partner. He does as such by organizing a column of code pegs on the unraveling board. At that point, the Code-producer comes into picture by conveying 0 to 4 key pegs in the little gaps of the column. On the off chance that this key peg is colored or black, it suggests that the forecast of the other player is exact both regarding shading and position, while, a white key peg indicates the likelihood of right shade sent in the off base spot.

There may be an instance when there are similar colors in the predication laid down the Code-breaker and it is not feasible to grant a key peg to all of them unless they match the exact number of similar color in the hidden code. Now, if the hidden code is A-A-B-B and the Code-breaker indicates B-B-B-A, the other player ought to grant two colored key pegs for the correct A, nothing for the third A and finally, a colored key peg for the last B. This ensure, that the suspense is kept alive, hiding the fact that the code has a second B in it! Here A and B represent colors that might be used in the table board.

Once feedback is provided, another guess is made; guesses and feedback continue to alternate until either the code-breaker guesses correctly, or twelve (or ten, or eight) incorrect guesses are made. The code-maker gets one point for each guess a code-breaker makes. An extra point is earned by the code-maker if the code-breaker doesn't guess the pattern exactly in the last guess. (An alternative is to score based on the number of colored key pegs placed.) The winner is the one who has the most points after the agreed-upon number of games are played.

There have been many mathematicians involved in researching concrete solutions to this game. Many number of algorithm have been presented on the world stage. Michiel de Bondt has used one in three 3SAT basics to prove that it can be solved by NP-complete logic. By examining different probabilities to deploy different number of players on the table, more number of holes on the game-board and another set of substantiated colors, different versions of this game have come into existence. Mastermind Secret Search (1997), New Mastermind (2004) and Mini Mastermind (2004) are its latest types.

Online versions have recently overtaken the popularity of board versions. Many companies have used different combinations of pieces and colors to avoid infringements pertaining to Intellectual Property Rights. If the unoccupied parts (holes) of the board are treated as another color, it would definitely lead to a more intense battle between the player.