When you play here as Registered or Anonymous you're competing with other players and it wouldn't be fair if you could just back up when you made a mistake. There is a Private mode where it's just you and you have access to Undo and Redo and your scores are not public.
It seems like you are asking about the online game at Freecell.net so let's cover that first:
For Freecell.net
Game numbers are NOT shown while you play the game. This would allow you to get information about the game while it was still in progress and possibly adjust your approach. For instance, if you saw it was a game with a low win rate you could adjust your playing style and play with more caution. This would not be fair in competitive play.
The game number is shown on the little window which pops up at the end of the game, whether you win or lose. Along with the "OK" button, you should see a line of text that looks something like this: 8x4 #23359-5
In the above example:
Since there seems to be constant confusion here between the Windows version and the Freecell.net version of the game, let's answer that question for Windows, as well:
For Windows Freecell
Game numbers are shown while you play the game. The number of the game which you've been dealt will appear in the "title bar" of the FreeCell game window.
If you are trying to enter a player name, and then it asks you for a password, then you have a chosen a name already in use by another player. In that case, you will have to pick a new (and hopefully unique) name.
Go to giphy.com and enter the search phrase for the type of thing you're looking for. It will offer you a number of options. Select one, click the "Share" icon, and then the "Copy Gif Link". Paste that into the Optional Link/URL box and add some kind of caption for it right below in the Link/Image Title box.
Have you tied the quick refresh operation described on the Problems page? It cures 95% of such browser flakiness.
Then read through the information on the Problems Page to see if your issue is discussed there and try the recommended solutions.
If that doesn't get it, read about what info to provide when reporting a bug and pass it along by posting on the Discussion Board.
You need to register or play as Anonymous and then in the game there's a Mode dropdown and you select Tournament. Then click play. It will present a list of games in the current tournament (or a notice "Closed - play for fun"). Just click a game and you'll be playing.
And read here for more information about tournaments at Freecell.net.
Have a look at the explanation of difficulty levels on the Freecell.net Instructions page. As you can see, games of difficulty level 10 are completely random deals. So there will randomly be easier and more difficult games at level 10. Games at other difficulty levels employ an algorithm that changes the likelihood that high cards will be buried in the columns. Games at difficulty level 1 receive the most tweaking. In general, the games with lower numbered difficulty levels will be easier than the those with higher numbers; however, none of this guarantees that a particular game number at difficulty level 1 will be easier than one at difficulty level 2 or 3, or even 10. Here's a counter-example: Suppose game #n-10 is the following random deal:
7S 7C 7H 7D 6S 6C 6H 6D
8S 8C 8H 8D 5S 5C 5H 5D
9S 9C 9H 9D 4S 4C 5H 4D
TS TC TH TD 3S 3C 3H 3D
JS JC JH JD 2S 2C 2H 2D
QS QC QH QD AS AC AH AD
KS KC KH KD
Then any application of the "burying" algorithm will actually produce a harder game; therefore, game n-m (such that m is less than 10) will be harder than game n-10.
Yes, it happens. With 32768 games in a level there's small but non-zero chance you'll be randomly assigned the same game twice. It's been a frequent topic on the Discussion Board. Here's one such thread.
I am assuming from your description that you used to connect to Freecell.net from the same employer and that, beginning sometime after you started playing, you stopped being able to connect.
If that is correct, then the problem is at your end, not at Freecell.net's. (It has been many months since Freecell.net changed its physical location and firewall.) So, it would seem that your employer has either recently changed or reconfigured the firewall there and, in so doing, has blocked this game. I guess you can ask your employer if a hole can be made in the firewall to let Freecell.net applications through but I'm not sure that's a career-building move.
That changes over time but it's on a currently a dedicated server running Ubuntu Linux.
You can hit Freecell.net with the browser on any modern phone and play the game. You need to have network connectivity of course to talk to the server.
If you're talking about the Microsoft Freecell program, that's a Microsoft application and used to come with Windows. Use a search engine as it has changed over time and you'll want to find out how to get it for your particular flavor of Windows.
That said, you should also be able to play here immediately and enjoy a number of benefits over the Microsoft Freecell game. Just click the 'play' link (or click on the 'Play Now' image on that home page).
Freecell FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) by Michael Keller discusses this.
The help file for Microsoft FreeCell contains the claim, "It is believed (though not proven) that every game is winnable."
As a joke, the Windows version includes two unsolvable games, numbered -1 and -2. Horne purposely made his claim about the rest of the games ambiguous in order to challenge people to find such impossible games, but intending it to mean that all of the 32,000 included deals were winnable. This comes as close as possible to being true...
Note: it later turned out that 11982 was, in fact, also impossible.
No, sorry, I don't keep detailed records. But we do donate all ad revenue and more to charity each year. We're currently donating about $12k per year.
It's custom.
The Discussion Forum is moderated, and we reserve the right to delete messages for any or no reason. In practice, the main reasons why postings disappear are:
Our Freecell discussion board is just a fun and games discussion board. If you want to discuss weightier stuff we suggest you go to Politics and Religion which is specifically for this type of thing. Or there are tons of sites on the that support such things. For example, you can use reddit.com and just find the appropriate sub-reddit and fire away. If you want to specifically engage users here, you can do a short post on our discussion board with a link to the reddit topic and a very short description. Any further comments of a more serious nature (religion, politics, general controversial topics, rudeness, threats, etc.) will be removed.
It is certainly true that the names on the postings here include many famous living and dead people, as well as some very original characters, such as Lumber Jack. Suffice it to say that these are all the genuine alter egos of, or identities assumed by, real contributors. Remember that you can normally assume that these names are used just for fun.
Discussion posts support a subset of Wikitables table formatting. When you want to begin tabular data simply type a line like:
{|
This begins recognition of table formatting. When you're "in" a table use the following:
|- starts a new row, 1st cell
|= left aligned cell
| right aligned cell
And finally to end the table, type:
|}
It's pretty limited and no, there's no preview. It's poke and hope.
The original version of the game was written in Java back in 1996. But the Internet has moved on and Java in a web browser is not very common now. As Java waned the browsers developed more capabilities and now you can play the game in about any modern browser without any add-ons.
The process varies depending on your platform. Do a Google search for something like "screenshot iPad" or "screenshot windows 11".
Standard 8x4 games here are all winnable. Streak away!
However some variants are extremely difficult. Take for example 8x0 (8 columns with 0 cells). The majority of those games are unwinnable.
However, there is a short list of variants which are close to being winnable where Freecell.net filters out the unwinnable deals, making
those variants as streakable as 8x4. Those variants are shown on the Scores page with asterisks and listed
below on that page.