Why Deal #11982 Cannot Be Won
Deal #11982 is the only one of Microsoft FreeCell's original 32,000 deals that no one has won. In the Internet FreeCell Project, which Dave Ring ran from August 1994 to April 1995, volunteers reported every other deal solved. Since then at least eight computer solvers, most of them built to search every possible line of play, have found no win with four free cells, so it is treated as impossible. FreeCell researcher Michael Keller reports that it can be won with a fifth free cell.
The game above deals it card for card, so you can see how far four cells get you. Our game never declares a loss: when you run out of useful moves, use Undo or Restart.
It is not the only impossible deal. It is one of eight among the first million Microsoft deals, and in 2018 Theodore Pringle and Shlomi Fish checked 8,589,934,591 deals by computer and found 102,075 that cannot be won, about one in 84,000.
How FreeCell Deal Numbers Work
Jim Horne, who wrote FreeCell for Windows, turned each deal number into a fixed shuffle with the random number generator in Microsoft's C compiler, so a number always deals the same layout. The original game had deals 1 to 32,000. Windows XP raised the range to 1,000,000 in 2001 and kept the first 32,000 unchanged. Many FreeCell programs copy the method, so a deal number means the same layout in each of them, ours included.
Numbered deals do not come from our provably fair shuffle. Microsoft's method is public, so anyone can work out a numbered layout in advance, which is what lets players share and compare them. For a deal nobody could know before it was dealt, start a game on the FreeCell page.
On this page, Next Deal opens deal #11983, Restart deals #11982 again from the start, and Share Deal copies this page's link. A numbered deal saves separately from your game on the main FreeCell page, so moving between the two loses neither.
Play Another Numbered Deal
Deals with a story:
- Deal #1941: the hardest deal you can win
- Deal #617: often the first hard deal for players going in order
- Deal #9998: winnable with no free cells
- Deal #11987: winnable with no free cells
- Deal #1: the first deal
For the rules, strategy, and a random deal, go back to FreeCell.
