A simple question
tucsonsky
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Is freecell the only game that always has at least one solution for clearing the board?
tucsonsky
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Does it always? Imagine a layout with kings at the bottom ascending to aces at the top. Thought I read somewhere, back in Windows 95 days, that some potential games have no solution.
i have no idea where to begin calculating the odds of that happening, they must be astronomical .. .. .. a layout like that would surely show up on this games a bear thread, lol
i was just thinking that i’ve played 10’s of thousands of games and have only given up on a few .. .. .. what makes this game so attractive to me is thinking that there must be a solution, if only i can find it! i’m gonna keep that attitude until the one u spoke of shows up!!! tks for ur response, have a groovy day
Like your attitude a lot, @tucsonsky. But I found this: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/15287/is-there-any-configuration-of-free-cell-that-cannot-be-solved // "Of the original 32000 games in Freecell, 11982 is the only one for which no legitimate solution was found. Since then, several computers and players have failed to find a solution – to the point where every possible combination of moves has been tried and has failed."
wow!!! if that game ever shows up, i’m gonna buy a bunch of lottery tickets!!! lol
tks for the info, zuden, so cool of u to find that for me
Yep, there are definitely unwinnable games of freecell. In fact we had one hereabouts not long ago that apparently had no solution —discussed in this thread: https://forum.greenfelt.net/discussion/8655/freecell-game-752157795-unsolvable
The total number of possible games of Free Cell is 52! (That's read "52 factorial", or 52 X 51 X 50...X 1.
Ask your favorite calculator to give you the value of 52! sometime - you won't believe it.) Therefore, the number of games that cannot be won must be very large indeed. Since I'm not a mathematician, I would not dream of attempting to calculate the actual number. However, there are versions of the game that automatically exclude these unwinnable games, and others that give the player the option of excluding them or (and I consider this a form of masochism) being presented with them at random and breaking his or her brain on them. I can only conclude from this that somebody, somewhere, sometime figured out a method for determining whether a given game is, in fact, impossible to win. Given the popularity of the game, it's really not that surprising - some Comp Sci professor at MIT probably gave it to his senior programming class as a homework assignment!
Here's a question for you, then - does Green Felt implement (that's geek-speak for "use") that algorithm to identify impossible games, or are the site's creators crypto-sadists who chuckle with delight at the thought of their users grinding away at games that have no winning solution?
I’m guessing, from ur comments, that when i first started playing freecell (at a different site) they were using the version that excluded the unwinnable games .. .. .. that would explain why i was under the impression that all games had a winning solution .. .. .. considering the amount of pleasure David and Jim provide the thousands of us who play on greenfelt.net every day, i have to say, the chances of them being any kind of sadists are nil .. .. .. thanks a bunch for ur input, i hope u enjoy ur games too!