Do you have a few games of Freecell between other computer operations? I do, and I particularly enjoy playing fast. I’ve started listing the games where I needed to play more than once to find a solution. In the first 200 of Microsoft’s 1 million games on Windows XP they are 63, 92, 110, 114, 117, 118, 124, 135, 169, 174, 178, 191. Some of those aren’t cited in other lists of hard games on the various Freecell websites, so I musta been tired! Previously I’d got several 50-winning streaks, and can’t remember my highest streak. It’s a fascinating game.

All but one deal (11982) of the 32,000 standard deals in W95/98 is solvable! Eight of the one million deals in FreeCell for Windows XP are unsolvable.

One expert nominates 1941 as the hardest solvable deal. ‘Another possible candidate is 10692 (in Windows XP or FreeCell Pro, try 80388). Besides the impossible deal number 11982, the most frequently asked-about deal is number 617. Although there are many harder deals, I suspect that 617 is the first really difficult deal that many players encounter when playing the deals in sequence.’

See http://home.earthlink.net/~fomalhaut/fclists.html for the hardest games.

For a good FAQ visit http://home.earthlink.net/~fomalhaut/fcfaq.html#Supermove

and note particularly http://home.earthlink.net/~fomalhaut/fcfaq.html#WinRate

I don’t have the time to answer any email correspondence about this, unfortunately.

I’m date-coding these Freecell items. You’ll track them using the various site-indexes.
Have fun – and prove me stupid by winning at first try some of my ‘difficult’
games :-)!

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher