Free Cell: I did it!

[Enola Straight]

I finished a Free cell game without "banking" a single card in one of the four holding spots up in the upper left hand corner.


The Game # was 10772.

[Encinitas]

Awesome!

[garygnu]

Did you move a stack of cards?

[Jake]

I wanna video of this, move by move.
I didn't know it was even possible to do this!
Congrats!

[Crotalus]

Cool! I'm going to have to try that game when I get home.

[carnivorousplant]

Cool!

[John DiFool]

Try game #11,982 next.

[Caridwen]

Originally Posted by John DiFool

Try game #11,982 next.

Very funny!

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Originally Posted by Enola Straight

I finished a Free cell game without "banking" a single card in one of the four holding spots up in the upper left hand corner.

Fun, isn't it? I think I have done it about a dozen times.

[DJ Motorbike]

What's so funny about game#:11,982?

[Rysto]

It's unsolveable.

[Q.E.D.]

Originally Posted by DJ Motorbike

What's so funny about game#:11,982?

It's unsolvable.

[GusNSpot]

I started at # 1 and am now on # 10.516. I am doing them in order.

Yes, I'm anal.

I do about 5000 per year.

The only one I will not work is # 11,982.

[Common Tater]

Shouldn't you have started at -1 and -2?

[GusNSpot]

Originally Posted by Common Tater

Shouldn't you have started at -1 and -2?

I did those just to learn how to play the game.

[Zebra]

I did it. It took me two tries.

[Caridwen]

I really think that more than just one are unsolveable. Unless it's just me.

[Q.E.D.]

Originally Posted by Caridwen

I really think that more than just one are unsolveable. Unless it's just me.

In the original version, there are 32,000 possible games and only one of these is unsolvable. In more recent versions, there are 1,000,000 possible games, which includes the original 32,000 games, and 8 of these are now known to be unsolvable. If you dealt with actual cards, you could have 52!/8! (about 2 x 10⁶³, officially, a metric shitload) different games; it is not known how many of these are actually unsolvable since FreeCell has been shown to be NP Complete--you have to determine solvability by brute force.

[Xema]

Originally Posted by Caridwen

I really think that more than just one are unsolveable.

In the original set of 32,000 games, only #11982 is unsolvable. In later versions (with far more games), these are said to be the unsolvable ones:
11982; 146692; 186216; 455889; 495505; 512118; 517776; 781948

[SandyHook]

I got it on the first try.

A friend of mine's father set out to do them all in order. He was about 84 when he started and made it up to around 10,000 or so before a heart attack ended things.

[Quartz]

Now try Spider Solitaire on Hard. It's good fun and each game keps me occupied for an hour or so.