Weird News

[Happy Monkey]

Not every Freecell game is winnable. You can construct an impossible one. Some versions of MS Freecell allow you to see examples by entering game numbers -1 and -2. Outside those special cases, all but one of the pseudorandom deals supported by the game can be won.


But it did require brute force to discover that.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

But it did require brute force to discover that.

I am not sure that quoted discussion says all possible solutions were attempted for game 11982. It only says no one has found a solution. That does not say all possible solutions were attempted.

Freecell demonstrates a challenge that quantum computing should solve many times faster. Since the number of possible games is quite large (apparently more than 11982 possible games). And the number of possible solutions is exponentially larger.

BTW, what are the number of possible games? I believe it is more than 8 E 67 possible games. I could not guess how many possible solutions must be attempted for each game.