Deal #1941: The Hardest Deal You Can Win
FreeCell researcher Michael Keller nominates #1941 as the hardest deal among Microsoft's original 32,000 that can still be won, from his own play and reports from other solvers. Unlike #11982, it has a winning line.
It does not look hard at the start. Only 14 cards cover the four Aces, against 22 in #11982, and the Ace of clubs sits under a single card. Column 3 holds two Aces: the Ace of diamonds at the back and the Ace of spades under four cards.
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 #1942, Restart deals #1941 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 #11982: the unwinnable deal
- 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.
