A Miss Becomes a Coordinate
In the classic peg-and-grid version of Battleship, a white peg is a record of a shot that did not hit a ship. Players place it on the tracking grid at the square they fired on, turning a fleeting turn into a visible map of where they have already searched.
The color split keeps two kinds of information separate: white marks empty water, while a different color marks a hit. That distinction matters because a player is not merely counting shots; they are narrowing down where an opponent’s ships could still be hiding.
The Grid Becomes a Search Tool
After several turns, the pattern of white pegs shows which coordinates have been ruled out. A player can choose an unmarked square rather than waste a turn firing at the same empty location again. When a shot hits, nearby squares become especially useful targets, since ships occupy connected spaces on the grid.
The pegs therefore do more than keep score. They let players reconstruct the search from the board itself, without relying on memory—and make each miss useful by removing one possible hiding place.
