Jump one peg over another to remove the one you jumped over. Try to remove all but one peg.
On a touch screen, a tap does what a click does.
Drag a peg into an empty space to make a move. The target space must be exactly two holes away from the starting peg, in an orthogonal direction, and there must be a peg in the hole in between.
With the keyboard, the arrow keys move a cursor around the board. Press Enter or Space on a peg to pick it up, then an arrow key to jump it in that direction; press Enter or Space again instead to put it back down.
Hint shows the next jump rather than making it. No jump in Pegs is forced by logic, so the hint searches for a line of jumps that leaves one peg and shows you its first jump. Alongside it, the hint compares that jump with the other jumps you could make, because telling a jump that can still finish from one that cannot is what winning at Pegs takes.
The game ends with one peg, so every other peg has to be taken along the way: leave no peg stranded. A peg is stranded when no peg is beside it. It cannot jump, and nothing can take it until a peg lands next to it, so you will have to go back for it. A peg is cut off when no peg can ever land beside it again. A board with a cut-off peg can never finish with one.
So the first thing the hint looks for is a jump that would cut a peg off, either straight away or whatever you jump next. It stripes that jump, outlines the peg, and shows one jump that keeps the peg in reach. When the striped jump and the suggested one start from the same peg, the suggested jump is one other way that peg can go; it is offered as one way to save the peg, not the only one.
Otherwise, a hint may show a package: a short run of jumps that clears a row or column of three, or a block of two by three, and puts every other peg back where it was. For three in a line, a spare peg beside one end can jump across the line into an empty hole, the line’s far peg jumps in, and the spare jumps back to where it began. Learning these shapes is how to clear a board one area at a time. A package is one hint, shown a jump at a time.
When the search has checked the other jumps, the hint says what it found. It draws an arrow on each jump that can still finish, the suggested one among them, and when it checked every jump it says that only those can. When every jump can still finish, which is usual early in a game, it says that too. In the middle of a game on the larger boards there are often too many ways to go for the search to check every jump quickly, and then the hint makes no claim about the jumps it did not settle. It turns to stranded pegs instead: a stranded peg the suggested jump goes back for, or another jump that would strand a peg the suggested jump keeps company. Leaving no peg stranded is a habit worth having rather than a rule. Sometimes the winning line strands a peg for a while and comes back for it later.
The hint refuses when there is nothing to search for: if a peg is already cut off, it outlines the cut-off pegs and asks you to undo, and it asks the same when the search proves no line of jumps from here leaves one peg. On the larger boards a position can also be too far from any finish for the search to settle, and the hint says so; Show solution… then shows a finish from the board as it was dealt.
Check & save asks the same question, since Pegs has no single answer to check your jumps against: it won’t save a position the hint would ask you to undo from, and outlines any cut-off pegs. A position too far from a finish for the search to settle is saved, and the check says it couldn’t tell.
These parameters are available from the ‘Custom type…’ option on the ‘Type’ menu.