Bulls and Cows Unblocked

Bulls and Cows is one of the oldest code-breaking puzzles around, played with pencil and paper long before computers. This version swaps numbers and colored pegs for six crisp black-and-white symbols, among them a star, a cross and a diamond. A row of four is hidden from you, and each guess earns a few small pegs that hint at how close you are. It runs unblocked in any browser, it is part of the open-source PaperGames set by Christopher Müller, and the shapes stay easy to read even for colorblind players.

Reading the Pegs

Set each of the four slots to a shape and submit. The game replies with up to four pegs:

• a black peg for each shape that is correct and in its correct slot
• a white peg for each shape that belongs somewhere else in the row

Crucially, no peg is tied to a particular slot. Two black pegs could mean slots one and three, or two and four, and working that out is the whole puzzle.

Past attempts and their pegs pile up under the board, giving you a running record of evidence. Above the slots, a tally tracks attempts spent and attempts left. Solve it within the limit to win; otherwise the hidden row is shown to you.

The three levels change both the guess budget and the rules:

Level	Guesses	Repeated shapes?
Easy	12	No
Medium	10	Yes
Hard	8	Yes

The Daily Challenge uses Medium rules, and an unfinished game stays stored in your browser.

Bulls and Cows controls

To do this	Keyboard	Mouse	Touch
Cycle the shape in a slot	Tab to the slot, then Enter to cycle	Click the slot to cycle through the six shapes	Tap the slot to cycle through the six shapes
Lock in a guess	Tab to "Submit guess", then Enter	Click "Submit guess"	Tap "Submit guess"
Begin a new secret code	—	Choose a level, then click "New game" (open "Menu" if it is hidden)	Choose a level, then tap "New game" (open "Menu" if it is hidden)
Try the puzzle of the day	—	Click "Daily Challenge"	Tap "Daily Challenge"

Thinking Like a Code Breaker

Start wide and then get precise. Your first two guesses should use as many different shapes as possible, since six shapes and four slots means two guesses can touch every shape at least once. Add up the pegs from both and you already know roughly which shapes are in play.

Next, change only one or two slots per guess. If a single swap turns a white peg into a black one, you have learned exactly where a shape sits. Changing everything at once gives you a new clue but tells you little about why the pegs moved.

A guess that scores zero pegs is a gift. Every shape in it is out of the code, so you can stop using them, at least on Easy where nothing repeats.

On Medium and Hard, do not cross off a shape just because you already found it. It may be in the code twice.

Before every submission, run a quick sanity check: if your guess were the secret code, would it produce the same pegs for every earlier row? If not, it cannot be the answer, and you are spending a guess for nothing.

A Puzzle That Fits a Coffee Break

A full game takes a few minutes, and the Daily Challenge gives you a reason to come back tomorrow. If you like this kind of logical narrowing down, try Black Box Lasers for a spatial version of the same idea, or look through more puzzle games on FreezeNova.