FreeCell slaps

Last month, I bought a pack of playing cards at the supermarket on a whim, and I found myself looking for something to do with them. I like cards. I like their aesthetics, I like how we arbitrarily categorized a bunch of slips of paper and then came up with games for them. But my card game white whale has always been a fun solitaire game.

Regular solitaire — Klondike solitaire — is kind of terrible. Any given deal of Klondike has a significant chance of being unwinnable, and the player doesn’t make very many meaningful choices over the course of the game anyway. If you find a move, most of the time you’re gonna want to take it. Other solitaire games aren’t much better.

So I’ve got my cards, and I’m looking for games, and I stumble upon the instructions for how to play FreeCell. I was tangentially aware of Microsoft FreeCell, but I’d always assumed that FreeCell was just the name of Microsoft’s Klondike implementation. But no: FreeCell is its own solitaire game, and it is the best. Microsoft popularized it, but it existed before that.

See, the great thing about FreeCell is that basically every game is winnable. Unwinnable deals exist, but you’re not likely to run into one. So you know you’ve got a real challenge to deal with. Unlike in Klondike, you’re constantly making real choices. You’re not hunting around for options — you have too many options, and you’re trying to sort out which strategy won’t screw you later on. Because if you misplay, your options will dry up and you’ll have nowhere left to go.

Perhaps the clearest difference between FreeCell and Klondike is the cards. In Klondike, the game starts with seven cards face-up, and an additional eight cards accessible in the stock. In FreeCell, all 52 cards are dealt face-up. You can see the whole game. The challenge isn’t in making lucky guesses. Once the cards are dealt, it’s a pure test of skill.

I’m not playing FreeCell as much as I was a few weeks ago, when I’d just discovered it. But I still play a game every so often. It’s compelling. I’m glad I found it. Give it a try if you’re feeling bored and have a minute — it may surprise you.

— Pan-fried, 2021-03-05. Back to top