FreeCell (Windows)

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FreeCell
Studio Oberon Games (Windows Vista version)
Microsoft (older versions)
Publisher Microsoft
platform Microsoft Windows
genre Computer card game
Game mode Single player
control Mouse keyboard (number keys)
A KDE variant

FreeCell is a card game ( solitaire ) that is included with Microsoft Windows . Until Windows 10 it was free of charge and advertising.

Goal of the game

The aim of the game is to turn or discard all cards according to the rules until they are on top of one another in the specified order.

history

The game gained worldwide fame through Jim Horne, who got to know it from the PLATO system and implemented a version with color graphics for Windows . It was first in Win32s as a test program, then in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack Volume 2 and later in the Best Of Microsoft Entertainment Pack . Freecell remained relatively unknown until it became part of Windows 95 and has since been part of every subsequent version of Windows.

Since Windows 10 , intrusive, uninterruptible advertising has been shown between games, which you can get rid of with a subscription for € 1.49 / month. Alternatively, install the Windows 7 versions of all programs whose Windows 7 versions worked better. There are other FreeCell applications, some of them as part of Solitaire suites.

possible solutions

There are ways to distribute the playing cards on the seats (see Faculty and Combinatorics ). The task remains the same if you swap columns with seven cards. There are permutations here , as well as for the columns with six cards. You can also swap the two black colors or the two red colors, as well as black and red without consequences. Therefore, there are different card distributions to be played.

The original Microsoft FreeCell game offers 32,000 different games, generated by a 15- bit pseudo-random generator. These games are known as "Microsoft 32000". Later versions of Microsoft FreeCell include more games, the original 32,000 of which are a subset. All games on this Microsoft 32,000 have been resolved, except # 11982. Many people and computer programs to solve Freecell games have not been able to find a solution, but without mathematical proof the unsolvability can only be assumed. Another possibility would be to use the brute force method.

The original help text can also be found in current versions: "It is assumed that every game can be won, although the proof of this is still pending." This was refuted as a false statement in the strict sense. The games numbered -1 and -2 have been added as a cuckoo's egg to show that there are combinations of cards that clearly cannot be solved. The question then arose whether all 32,000 games could be won.

In later versions of Windows, FreeCell contains at least 1,000,000 games.

cheating

The possibility of winning every Microsoft FreeCell game has been added for the software testers. It only exists in versions of Windows prior to Windows Vista. To do this, you have to hold down Ctrl-Shift-F10 during the game. When the dialog box appears, select “Cancel” to win, “Try Again” to lose, or “Ignore” to quit and continue playing the game as intended. But that is not yet correct proof of the solvability of every game, so here are wrong solutions for the said card combinations.

In Windows XP (before the game is shown as lost) you can minimize the display (limit it to the taskbar) and shut down Windows to keep a hopeless situation out of the statistics.

There is no known function under Windows 7 to automatically solve a game. Alleged ways like editing a .mui file don't work.

Another option, which only works in Windows Vista and Windows 7, is to select a game with "Select game" and enter -3 or -4 into the game selection box. When the game loads, you simply have to move an ace to the target position and the rest of the cards will follow automatically.

The Internet FreeCell Project

When FreeCell became known in the 1990s, it was still unclear which of the 32,000 games could be solved. To answer this question, Dave Ring started the Internet FreeCell Project, which is dedicated to the task of finding solutions for all known games by humans.

To this end, Ring divided the amount of 32,000 games into chains of 100 games each. Unsolvable games were forwarded to volunteers. In this respect, the project used the strength of multiprocessing in the form of human heads. The project ended in October 1995 and only Game 11,982 resisted any human attempt at a solution. However, this is not yet certain proof that this card combination is in principle unsolvable.

Unsolved combinations

Of the current games, eight have so far been unsolved. They have the numbers 11982, 146692, 186216, 455889, 495505, 512118, 517776 and 781948. This conclusion results from the evaluation of various authors of free-cell solution programs. Danny A. Jones and Gary D. Campbell's programs solved all FreeCell games except for the combinations mentioned. So far, other programs have not been able to find a solution for these initial situations either.

swell

  1. ↑ heise.de: Comment on the end of the free upgrade to Windows 10: That can be done better, Microsoft!
  2. ↑ chip.de: Windows 10: Play Solitaire without ads - that's how it works
  3. ↑ https://www.chip.de/downloads/Windows-7-Spiele-fuer-Windows-8-und-10_86938415.html
  4. ↑ Ellen Kaye: One Down, 31,999 to Go: Surrendering to a Solitary Obsession , New York Times. October 17, 2002. 
  5. ↑ FreeCell FAQ and links . Retrieved October 2, 2007.

Web links