FreeCell Solitaire
What FreeCell is
Every card is face up from the first second. Nothing is hidden, nothing is drawn, and no shuffle can save you or ruin you halfway through. That is the whole appeal: a FreeCell deal is a puzzle that is already fully decided, and the only thing between you and the solution is the order you take it apart in.
How the board is laid out
Fifty-two cards go into eight columns — four of seven cards and four of six. Above them sit four free cells on the left, each holding a single card, and four foundations on the right, one per suit. You win when all four foundations run from ace to king.
How you move
One card at a time. Onto a tableau column a card must be one rank lower and the opposite colour; onto a foundation it must be the next rank up in the same suit. An empty column takes any card at all, which is why an empty column is worth more than a free cell.
Moving a run of cards looks like an exception but is not: the game simply does the one-at-a-time moves for you, so a run only goes if you had enough space to carry it card by card. That is the number this site keeps on screen — you can move (1 + free cells) × 2^(empty columns) cards at once, and one less if you are moving into the empty column itself. Most lost games are lost by forgetting that second half.
How to win more often
Dig out the aces and twos early, keep at least one free cell open, and treat emptying a column as the real goal rather than a side effect — it doubles what you can carry. When a deal stalls, the cause is almost always a low card buried under a long, tidy-looking run you built too soon.
Deal numbers
This site uses the same numbering as Microsoft FreeCell, so a deal you remember is the deal you get. That includes number 11982, the one deal out of the original 32,000 that cannot be won at all — it needs five free cells, and the game gives you four. Add ?deal=11982 to the address to see it.
Boards that our solver cannot finish within a hundred moves are not handed out, so a deal you are given is a deal that can be taken apart.
FreeCell by the numbers
We ran this site's own solver over all 32,000 original Microsoft deals. It won 31,976, proved deal 11982 impossible, and ran past its search limit of a million positions on the other 23. Those 23 are hard for our solver, not for you: the FreeCell FAQ records every Microsoft deal except 11982 as solved.
Four deals in five can be won with just two free cells, so on most boards the other two are slack you can afford to spend. Only about 1 deal in 120 needs all four. Each deal was solved with no free cells, then one, then two, stopping at the first count that wins; the 51 deals the solver could not settle within its limit are left out.
