In Purble Shop, you are playing a game of Mastermind, brought into the modern world. You have to "dress" a Purble in their favorite outfit. You make guesses about what they want to wear, and are given clues if you are close or not.

You make your first guess and submit it. That guess is shown in the lower left of your screen for historical reasons, and you are told two things. First, you're told how many items you got exactly right - right color, right location. Next, you're told how many things were close - right color, but wrong location.



So in this example, on my first guess (the lower left outfit) my guesses had four colors right, but none of the actual items were in the right spot. So perhaps my Purble likes green, but he didn't like his green track suit.

In my second guess - the next one along to the right, with the blue track suit, three items were the right color in the right location. Maybe it was the purple hair, the green smile and the blue suit. Another one thing was a good color but the wrong item.

By making logical guesses, you can then narrow it down to the right combination of items. For example, we know from the leftmost panel that the red antennae are NOT a favorite. That guess gave us a "zero" in the "right color, right feature" category. So in the fifth guess I made, it is NOT those antennae which are right - maybe it's the eyes? Maybe the red track suit? I dressed the Purble entirely in red for that fifth guess, and only ONE item was right. So the Purble only wants one red item, and based on the other guesses we made, we should have a fairly good idea of which item that is!

Here's the final correct image -



By looking back at the previous guesses, you can now see how the game was accurately guiding us by telling us how many right matches we had, and how many matches gave us a favorite color.

Well recommended, very good for helping to puzzle your mind!

NOTE: I do not think you can buy this game separately. It comes free with Vista, so if you're interested in this game, it might be time to upgrade to Vista!