Deal #617: The First Hard Deal
FreeCell researcher Michael Keller suspects that #617 is the first really difficult deal many players meet when they play Microsoft's deals in order, though he notes that plenty of deals are harder. It can be won: every one of the original 32,000 except #11982 has been.
All four Aces start deep. Twenty cards sit on top of them, and the Ace of diamonds is at the back of column 2 under six, so no card can go home on the first move. With deal #1, #617 is also one of the two layouts a widely used programming exercise publishes for checking a copy of Microsoft's dealing method.
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 #618, Restart deals #617 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 #1941: the hardest deal you can win
- 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.
