freecell
cici
REGISTERED
a lot of cheating going on it is physically impossible to complete a game in 8 seconds yet many seem to achieve the impossible!!
come on guys and gals give the rest of us a chance.......
Comments
Hi @cici if you navigate to Green Felt’s FAQ you will find this:
“ Why are there so many high scores with clearly impossible times?
Trick question! They're not impossible. Here are some videos made by our users demonstrating these remarkable times: ”
https://greenfelt.net/faq
Cici; You should apologize to both David and Jim who do their utmost to keep this site free of cheaters. Cheating isn't done on this site thanks to their great work and dedication. Thank you David and Jim. Outstanding job!
Again-I wonder why anyone else's score matters. Solitaire...solo. One. Playing against no one. There is no prize. You can't cheat. Because you're playing a game that is not a team sport. And life will go on-no matter where you end up on the "leader board."
Also-some people are really, really good and they should be applauded, not doubted.
Once you master power moves, 8 seconds on a tablet is not remotely impossible on most games. In fact, 8 seconds is a cake walk. I can typically find a fast solution within 2-5 minutes. Over the course of practicing and honing that solution for about another 5 minutes minutes, I'm almost always down in the 8-10 second range. These days, that's good enough to achieve my goal of knocking a player who's unnaturally fond of a certain political figure--and insistent about waving his flag--off of the top 10 list for the Game of the Day. Back when I was obsessed with booking the fastest score I could achieve, the real challenge was breaking the 4-6 second barrier (depending on the game, of course).
If you want to see just how easy it can be to go under the 10 second bar, check out this thread:
https://forum.greenfelt.net/discussion/8400/not-a-freecell-super-move-player-well-you-gotta-try-it-with-this-game#latest
And a little free advice, @cici, for getting along with folks on social media (and in the real world, I guess): start by asking how something is accomplished rather than asserting that it can't be done and accusing those who can do what you ignorantly consider impossible of being cheaters. Worth noting that I was guilty of essentially the same mistake on this very site. I still have a bit of crow feather stuck in my teeth...
The thing is DeusExMachinia, your average time, by your own admission, is 5 minutes.You are not playing Free Cell (that's where your name has been appearing for years), you're playing something called "how can I take advantage of common conjunction of cards in what should be a random distribution" Try it on Fortythieves.
Perhaps there should be two Leaderboards, one for each type of solving system.
That's actually not what he said-he said he can find a solution in two to five minutes and then use super moves to win the game. That is the exact purpose that super moves was designed for. It's not an accident that it's there. It's part of the Greenfelt design.
The point is that if the powers that be wanted the site to be different it would be. We all play within the same confines.
@davidr: if you’re not a fan of Super Moves, then perhaps you should just ignore the time-based rankings. It’s a bit like an Olympic sprinter arguing that drivers in Formula 1 aren’t really running races, and their infernal combustion engines put actual runners at a distinct disadvantage.
I’m not at all sure what you mean about “[taking] advantage of common conjunction of cards,” but I suspect you have a rather loose concept of what Super Moves are.
@cici - make sure you tick the box in the rankings for a player's first time, not fastest time. First time round is genuinely against the deal, subsequent attempts are against the programmer.
@DeusExMachina - perhaps I misunderstood you. I understood you to say that you will open a game and, off line, study the layout and work out which super moves to make. That takes you about 5 minutes. you then re-open the game and apply the procedure that you worked out. The time taken to apply that procedure is what is reflected as your time to complete the game. It was on that basis that I suggested, a little flippantly, that there should be two sets of leader board tables, one for us abacus users and one for the techno freaks. I think that the two methods, assuming I understand correctly, amount to there being two different games.
@DeusExMachina & Lasso. After posting my comment I had a few other considerations float into my head. Lasso implied that the conjunction of the cards, allowing for your super moves, was deliberate. I assumed the cards were distributed randomly so I did a little researched on Free Cell and found that the game first appeared in the 1920's although it is thought to be older. That, of course predates computers, so the game wasn't invented for computers but Microsoft included the game in their early operating systems. Presumably to help users to familiarise themselves with the operating system in a fun ,or at least interesting way. So it seems the card distribution is random and there is no algorithm embedded in the program to direct a certain distribution. That's not something I believe for Forty Thieves, I think there is a malign algorithm at work in THAT game. The undo button is very important for That game. From opening up the game (free cell) to completing it takes me, on average 2 minutes, occasionally I slip under a minute sometimes 5 minutes, but from first sight to completion I am faster than you super move guys. Of course I only win about half the time, on a good day.
@davidr Sorry, I must not have been clear enough. The first 2-5 minutes I referred to is spent playing the game, not analyzing the board. That's trying out different avenues, partly to find one that works, but mostly hunting for one that lends itself to maximizing power moves. Once I've settled on a solution with potential for high speed, I practice it, rapidly improving how fast I can complete it--and often refining the steps along the way.
Note that I go through that process only for the game of the day. When I play "regular" games (which is rare these days), I fly much faster, only very rarely playing game to conclusion more than once. I sometimes restart a given game a few times as I hunt for a good opening gambit, but even with that bit of probing I typically finish a game in less than two minutes. It's not unusual for me to spend less than a minute on a game and record a time of less than 30 seconds. (I hope that doesn't come across as bragging. I'm not close to being the fastest player hereabouts.) Of course, occasionally a tough game comes up where the solution takes longer than 1:30, and finding the solution might take 10 minutes or more. I actually prefer those challenging games to easy ones that I can complete within 20 seconds of seeing the board.
@DeusExMachina personal curiosity: "the first 2-5 minutes you spend playing the game", are you replaying the game? Have been curious since I started on GreenFelt whether there were, for example, 2000 persons playing a certain game vs, say, 1500 individuals because a bunch of them - like me - were stymied and had to replay a time or two to get it right. Thank you.
@DeusExMachina Thanks for clarifying your methods. You are playing a different game to the classic Free Cell, your aim is to find the fastest way to complete the transfer of cards but hand/eye co-ordination must account for 50% of the time posted and you need the computer to super move the cards, that isn't possible with Free Cell played physically with a pack of cards, which is what the game is about, in my opinion. (I have to say also that I have never seen you post a score over 10secs!! ) People have been complaining for ever about the impossibility of completing the number of moves in the time registered in some of the winning scores, and of course they are correct, it is impossible to play 100 moves in 8 secs playing Free Cell i.e. the card game. You are playing a computer game, hence my suggestion that there be two leader boards.
For myself, I almost always score better on the number of moves then on time taken, I feel that's the right way.
I would be really interested to see your comments on Forty Thieves, have you tried it? I won a game tonight- the first this week!!!!
Great question @sierrarose. For the Game of the Day, I'd guess I play it to completion at least 40-50 times. And it wouldn't surprise me if I restarted mid-game over 200 times. The vast majority of all those attempts are in the phase where I've settled on a fast solution and I'm just trying to book a fast time--repeatedly in the case where I'm logging scores under several usernames expressly for the purpose of pushing one particularly obnoxious fan of a certain still more obnoxious individual off of the leader board. Bottom line, I probably invest about 15-30 minutes in the GotD.
But back to your question, yeah, I and a handful of other players who are chasing low times account for hundreds if not thousands of 30-40,000 plays the. And as far as I'm aware, all of those plays get counted.
If you're ever curious how many of the plays went to completion, carefully play up each card until you have one king left. Then tap Give Up. It's safe to assume that you're the only one to do that, so your "place" minus 1 equals the number of completed games. I saved you the trouble for today's game. As of a minute ago, 2,135 games had been finished out of 37,121 plays.
@davidr I think I tried a few games of Forty Thieves. Not even sure about that, much less whether I managed to win any. My games at the moment are Freecell, Spider (4 suit), and Hopeless.
I'm not sure how exactly Dave and Jim would differentiate the two styles of play in order to maintain separate leader boards. Perhaps by tracking whether any supermoves were used?
This whole discussion has gotten me thinking about another type of daily competition for the speed demons: A ten-game set (or 16 if you prefer powers of 2;-), where the site tracks the fastest average time (first score only) and total elapsed time to complete all the games. Average number of moves would be interesting for those who prefer that metric. How 'bout it @david & @jim?
Wow. Eye-opening conversation thread here, for me. A whole different class of people playing the game, with completely different desired end result. (From me.) Pretty cool. I like it that we're all in it together. Thank you, @DeusExMachina, for answer.
All the card games are built such that it starts with an ordered deck, shuffles it, then deals it as the rules dictate. Mostly this just means dealing out rows at a time into the tableau, though some games have more intricate setups than others (klondike deals in the triangle pattern and deals the top card face up, for instance). Most if not all games specify how to deal the cards out in their rule sets and we absolutely try to follow the rules and deal it out in the same way that you'd do it if you were playing with real cards in your hand.
40 thieves is purely random each time, as is freecell. None of the card games attempt to stack the deck in any way.
@DeusExMachina Jim and I have discussed things like that before. We like the idea but neither of us have had a ton of time to implement anything recently. I like the idea of timed competitions where the players play the same game but they can only start it in a 5 minute window (or smaller). Once you see the board the timer starts and pressing "retry" doesn't reset the timer like it does normally. The game number is not shown and it isn't ever played again.
It would probably require us to build some sort of multiplayer lobby system, which is why we haven't done it yet.
.
All this is too complicated for me.I'll just plod on.Stay safe everyone.
Me too, graeme - I play against myself. Or - if I get a high ranking by virtue of being one of the first few to play a specific game, I say, "wow I'm good!" and pretend I don't know my score will be stampeded shortly. Nice that some can enjoy a new game of "compare game strategies"!
It is interesting though.
Agreed, it is interesting to learn about other players’ motivations and methods of achievement. Endless competitive variations.
Vive la difference