The total number of color matches is the sum of matches for all individual colors. We suggested above that 0011 would be a good starting guess. Of course not. They are very much the same in that ordering of colors is to a great extent an arbitrary matter, as in fact is ordering of the positions. Better yet, students may be encouraged to look for patterns that make games equivalent .
Mastermind also admits meaningful modifications.
The obvious one is to allow different number of colors and positions. In another variant, colors can't be repeated. This reduces the number of valid codes from 1296 to 360. In yet another variant, the response may only contain the number of exact matches. This does make the game more difficult.