Frog Hops Strategy: Peg Solitaire Tips That Work

By Nesim Razon, independent Android developer

Frog Hops is peg solitaire with frogs: jump a frog over a neighbor into an empty hole, the jumped frog disappears, and your goal is to end with just one frog. A few habits keep you out of dead ends.

The rules

• Tap a frog, then tap a glowing empty hole to jump.
• A frog jumps in a straight line (up, down, left or right) over exactly one neighboring frog into the empty hole right behind it.
• The frog you jumped over disappears.
• You win when one frog is left. If more frogs remain but no jump is possible, you are stuck: use Undo.

Strategy

• Keep your frogs connected. A frog with no other frog within two holes can never jump or be jumped again, so an isolated frog usually means a dead end.
• A common approach: clear the frogs far from the center first and work inward, instead of taking the closest jump automatically.
• Think backwards: the very last jump needs two frogs side by side with an empty hole behind them. Plan where your last pair will be.
• Use Undo freely. Getting stuck and trying again is part of the puzzle.

The classic board

The classic game uses a cross-shaped board with 33 holes, starting with 32 frogs and an empty center. It can be solved in 31 single jumps (18 moves if you count chained jumps by the same frog as one move).

Frog Hops in Logiclings

Logiclings uses fewer frogs, from 6 to 14, so puzzles are quick. Every puzzle is built backwards from a single frog, which guarantees it can be solved. Easy puzzles allow many solutions, hard ones only one or two. A hint makes a jump that leads to a solution, and tells you when you have reached a dead end.