It is impossible to cheat at solitaire.
July 27, 2018 8:36 AM   Subscribe

 
:D
posted by evilDoug at 9:05 AM on July 27, 2018


This is what I needed today. You win :)
posted by slipthought at 9:10 AM on July 27, 2018


Oh thank you! I always need new games! And this has so many to choose from!
posted by narancia at 9:23 AM on July 27, 2018


Neat! My grandmother used to play a solitaire that I've never been able to find a reference to elsewhere. I think this is an accurate recreation:
Edith
posted by aneel at 10:47 PM on July 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


This is my wheelhouse! I'm loving this!! Thank you.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 10:05 AM on July 29, 2018


Neat! My grandmother used to play a solitaire that I've never been able to find a reference to elsewhere. I think this is an accurate recreation

Your grandmother was a wizard because this is nearly impossible for me, dang
posted by vibratory manner of working at 7:24 PM on July 29, 2018


Yeah, that version seems unplayable. There doesn't seem to be any way to discard or go through the deck, so whatever can be moved the program does automatically on load and then you are stuck. The only actual move I seem to be able to make is if one of the three things in the 'trash' pile is in sequence with a pile you can move it there, but that's it.
posted by tavella at 11:06 PM on July 29, 2018


You're missing a key rule: you can move any stack of cards, even if as a stack they're not a set, as long as the bottom of your stack matches the one it goes to. For example, imagine two columns:

KD 2C 1C JD
3C

It's a valid move to pick up that 2C and put it on the 3C, taking with it everything on top, with the end result:

KD
3C 2C 1C JD

I've won a couple games now - it's not impossible and I think I'm trending towards one out of every four games I can win? It's pretty tough though.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:54 AM on July 30, 2018


looking at my stats, I think I've won 4 out of the last 10 games actually, so it's not even that bad. But you have to stick with it and it took me a while to get the hang of seeing the patterns.

Thank you for sharing your grandma's game, aneel, it's been fun learning it.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:07 AM on July 30, 2018


Huh. Okay, in mobile the game is entirely different than when you open that link in desktop. In mobile, it's 7 overlapping cards (or piles, can't see under) and the three waste.
posted by tavella at 3:20 PM on July 30, 2018


Oops, I stopped paying attention to this thread. Yes, the key is that you can move whole piles, even if they're out of order, which is different from the typical Klondike/Canfield games.

I think something like 1/3 of the games are winnable. There are certain patterns that are *definite* losses. And a bunch more games that I think I probably played the best way I could and still lost, but maybe there was a way...

I like this general level of winnability. If I knew that every game was winnable, I'd feel compelled to keep going until I found the solution (which Politaire allows by letting you Undo back to questionable choices), but since I know that some (and think that many) are unwinnable, I'm able to let it go.

Politaire makes it easy to "cheat" in one of the two ways that my grandmother would typically cheat: playing a card other than a King up to the base of a stack. I can win a lot of the games where I get stuck by doing that once. The other way she'd "cheat" would be to pull one of the face-down cards into her hand (the 3 cards left over after dealing the 7x7 spread), which I haven't found a way to do in Politaire.
posted by aneel at 9:08 PM on August 8, 2018


I kept playing a bunch and found that I liked it better with two face down in the three middle columns, so it's 2-2-3 instead of 2-3-2. The extra three cards available to you at the start tweaks it just a touch towards winnability, but it's still pretty much the same feel to the game
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:15 PM on August 8, 2018


Heh. I just tried the base game that Politaire thinks is closest to this one: https://politaire.com/odessa

So far I've won 100% (1/1) games!
posted by aneel at 9:24 PM on August 8, 2018


I particularly love that this site has been around (unchanged?) since 2014, and that its house ads are book reviews.
posted by aneel at 9:28 PM on August 8, 2018


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