Playing Mastermind with Many Colors

We analyze the general version of the classic guessing game Mastermind with $n$ positions and $k$ colors. Since the case $k \le n^{1-\varepsilon}$, $\varepsilon>0$ a constant, is well understood, we concentrate on larger numbers of colors. For the most prominent case $k = n$, our results imply that Codebreaker can find the secret code with $O(n \log \log n)$ guesses. This bound is valid also when only black answer-pegs are used. It improves the $O(n \log n)$ bound first proven by Chv\'atal (Combinatorica 3 (1983), 325--329). We also show that if both black and white answer-pegs are used, then the $O(n \log\log n)$ bound holds for up to $n^2 \log\log n$ colors. These bounds are almost tight as the known lower bound of $\Omega(n)$ shows. Unlike for $k \le n^{1-\varepsilon}$, simply guessing at random until the secret code is determined is not sufficient. In fact, we show that an optimal non-adaptive strategy (deterministic or randomized) needs $\Theta(n \log n)$ guesses.
Comment: Extended abstract appeared in SODA 2013. This full version has 22 pages and 1 picture