These comments are provided just for entertainment and historical purposes. In the early days the winner of the Masters Tournament was invited to write a comment. Back then, winning that tournament was a pretty big deal and some of the comments are pretty long and funny and even a little poetic. Here's WRAC's recollection:
In the beginning (first year?), there was a $50 prize for winning,
but you could only win it once every 12 weeks. The prize
winner was thus the highest finisher who hadn't won any of
the past 12 tourneys. But the winner's comments were written
by the prize winner, not by the top finisher, so sometimes the
names and the comments on this page don't match, which can be a
little confusing. Also the first Masters was won by JC, so I
don't know why arch1 is shown as the winner.
| Date | Winner | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| 2004-08-08 | Laffman | I'd like to thank the 6x4's and 7x3's for staying the heck away from me these last few weeks. Without some cooperation from the low-sum games, I never would have had this opportunity to receive so many congratulations and words of encouragement from my Netcell buddies on the occasion of a third Master's win in a row. I'm very proud to become only the third person, after mickyiw and WRAC, to win three Master's in a row, but both of them have done so several times, and mickyiw has two streaks of 4 and a streak of 7, so I've got a long ways to go to catch up to their mastery. (Thanks to Reporter, btw, for sharing those stats and making things more interesting as usual.) I hope to compete in the next Master's to try to extend my streak to four, but one way or another, the streak stops there, because during the following Master's, I'll be busy getting married. Congratulations on your wedding Laffman, and best wishes for the future - all your NetCell friends |
| 2004-08-01 | Laffman | You might think it's a good feeling to have the lead at 31 games with over half the time remaining, and the one game that's left looks unsolvable. Nope, not with WRAC and mabb in the field. Those final stumpers have been my downfall more times than I care to remember. This time, the remaining game looked *really* unsolvable to me, so I stopped trying with about an hour left, and hoped for the best. It must have been around the one-hour mark that WRAC and mabb became trapped under heavy objects, because they didn't get that last one either, allowing me to breathe an elated sigh of victory. Thanks all around. |
| 2004-07-25 | Laffman | I couldn't ask for a better way to end my Master's drought. This tournament had just the right mix of games for me - challenging enough to allow me to keep up with the likes of micky and goatee, but missing that final cluster of stumpers that usually makes me tear my hair out at the end. There were hard games, notably #11, but no super-stumpers, and strangely enough, I was able to draft the last group of games all the way to the end. I don't look at the leaders down the stretch, only the game stats, so when I solved that last game (#11), knowing that I hadn't gotten it first, I expected no better than second place, so it was a very nice surprise to win it. It was a very strong field, which always makes a victory even more satisfying. The usual thanks to Denny for a rockin' site, to the other players for making it fun, and to Reporter for his comprehensive and very entertaining account of this Master's over on the "Netcell Addicts" board. |
| 2004-07-11 | WRAC | This really wasn't my kind of tournament - 30 easy to moderate games and 2 annoying 6x4s that looked hopeful at times, but ultimately remained unsolved. Usually, I get my butt kicked with this type of line-up, so why I won (besides the obvious fact that mickyiw and goatee were absent) is beyond me. All I can tell you is I played as fast as I could for the first hour, and then spent the second hour nervously expecting mabb to solve one of the impossible 6x4s. Fortunately, this never came to pass, so there you have it. Of much greater interest was the July 16 8:00 pm Freakout, where I found myself battling pWRACtical-joker, d-WRAC-ula, WRAC-Revenger, aWRACnophobic and alliwannadoisWRACnRoll (otherwise respectively known as Laffman, mabb, davidxz300, bluerose and kangaroo)! Sorry you guys missed the expression on my face when I first checked the leader board, but thanks for the laughs. Congratulations also to Laffman on a hard-won victory! |
| 2004-07-04 | WRAC | Oh my! To think this tournament was almost won by an Obscenity, and a blasphemous one at that! I must say, it looked as though it might turn out that way when the Obscenity won the first 29 games in 44 minutes. But my mother always told me that those who are proficient at using 4-letter words are often less adept at solving 4-cell games, so I figured maybe I could steal the tourney by solving one of the remaining two unsolved 6x4s, or perhaps the 8x2. I picked the level-10 6x4 first. It looked promising, and, with a little fiddling, I got it on my second or third try. Judging by the fact that it then went unsolved for the rest of the tourney, you may consider that pure luck, and perhaps it was. But I like to think I got a little boost from the freecell gods, who prefer to see tournaments won by nice, wholesome names such as WRAC. I then looked at the 8x2, but it soon became clear that even mabb wouldn't be able to solve it, so I spent the rest of the time on the other 6x4. This was PAINFULLY close to being solvable, and I spent most of the last hour being grateful that mabb wasn't playing because I was sure she would find a way to get it. I finally concluded though, that it was not only unsolvable, but probably unmabbable as well. So that's how it ended. I had won my battle for truth, justice and the prevention of four-letter words from appearing on Denny's home page. But stay tuned next week - the battle against improperly placed Obscenities is a never-ending one! |
| 2004-06-20 | mabb | Although I firmly believe that boasting is despicable and bragging is deplorable and blustering is disgusting, etc, etc, please indulge me this wee little whisper: that was such a sweet win – delightful and delicious in every way, especially coming on the heels of the Friday evening Freakout tourny, where I pulled a similar stunt. On that evening, I was SO VERY tempted to post a tiny dig on the discussion board, aimed mainly at WRAC and Laffman - who both fought VERY hard, but I restrained myself, and tonight was my reward! Starting off in column four, as is my habit, there were troubled waters in the form of several sticky 11-sum games, particularly the 9x2 (14189-7) in box #28. But moving west to column three, the waters were no smoother, due to several messy 6x6’s, plus another 6x5. By the time I had gotten through these two columns, even having left three 10-sum games behind, I think I was 45 minutes into the tourny! DESPAIR! I could only hope I had knocked off some toughies that others hadn’t faced yet. Then on to column two - the softball column, where I was able to pick up some speed. I slowed down again at the end of column one, where there were a couple of tough 12-sums. I was now through the board, at 29 games, so I checked the stats and found that the 8x2 had been won. I think my rank was maybe fifth or sixth, and after the 8x2, I moved up a bit, to fourth place perhaps. Two unwon 6x4’s remained. Whenever I face 6x4’s, I can’t help but think of WRAC’s words from the discussion board many moons ago, "That’s pretty much all I play anymore", referring to his favorite 6x4 variant! Though I’ve never heard WRAC speak, in my mind those words always come in a strong, swaggering (intimidating!) John Wayne voice, which plays over and over and over until I’m near frantic. The only way to drown him out, I’ve found, is to start humming Julie Andrews tunes from the Sound of Music. John Wayne just can’t co-exist with so much "Edelweiss" around! But back to the subject, I was bouncing between the two 6x4’s, when I saw that Burtle and poqi were leading the way by conquering game #8 (6x4, 32525-11). Interesting how sometimes the higher difficulty games fall before the ones of supposedly lesser difficulty, isn’t it? After struggling to 31 wins, I was surprised to be in third place, ahead of WRAC! Thirty minutes and one game remained (6x4 30149-7). By the general look of it, this game did not inspire a lot of confidence. In fact, had there been any other unwon games, I have a feeling this one would have been dismissed and perhaps never won at all. My strategy for a good while was to try to clear column 2, building up on the right side of the board (on the Q-h, K-d, and 7-c). I completely ignored column one. Fairly soon, I realized that trying to unlock that Ace of diamonds just wasn’t working. I continued with building up the right side, using cards from columns 2 and 3, but stopped short in column two on the 7-d. Suddenly, I noticed I had two black tens open, which finally made me pay attention to column one, where both red nines were located. I recklessly raced up column one, filling up all the free-cells with no real plan in mind, when………Oh, my good Maria! THE ENTIRE COLUMN COULD BE CLEARED! The skies opened up and the angelic choruses resounded – "Climb every mountain, ford every stream!" Of course, this didn’t necessarily mean that it was actually winnable, but at least it brought me to a new place in the game, which was downright exciting. After that, it was a matter of discovering that the two uncovered aces (clubs and hearts) could both be built up to seven, fairly conveniently, and then the game was completely opened up. So now, nothing remains to be said, except, "So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, goodnight!" And, of course, I look forward to future contests with all of you wonderful players! |
| 2004-05-30 | WRAC | As kangaroo/Reporter pointed out (see below), this was a particularly unusual tournament. All the games were solvable, and none were extremely difficult, but quite a few were more than a little challenging (8 games solved by 10 or fewer players - perhaps a record). Surprisingly, the toughest game of all was probably a 7x5 (24064-11). True, fewer people solved one of the 7x3s, but that game didn't have a solver until quite late in the tourney, and I know many players won't touch a 10-sum until they see that someone else has won it or until they have no other choice. In my case, I battled the 7x5 for quite a while early, and then had some troubles with the two 8x2s, the result of which being that I doubt I was even in the top 15 halfway through the tournament (I dared not look). Things got a little easier after that, and I managed to pass Crunch and davidxz300 to take the lead at 30 games. The last 7x3 was a bit of luck - I didn't have time to think it through, and I knew from the clock I only had one attempt left, so I frantically clicked and somehow won it with just a few seconds remaining. (Who needs exercise to get their heart rate up?) Musically, I put on the new wave channel on my digital cable, but the truth is, the pace of this tourney was so frantic, I barely noticed it was on.
As promised, here are roo's most interesting comments: This was only the second time that the entire top 10 were still solving games in the masters after 100 minutes, with winner WRAC solving his final game with 18 seconds to spare, and even after that two other players snuck another win in - foxy0717 finished a 25th game in 119:53 and FerretZone finished a 24th game in 119:59. Phew! For comparison, the other time this happened was way back in masters #17, August 26th 2000. This was the top 15 then: 1.. WRAC....... 32 ... 102.56 WRAC's time of 119:42 is the longest it has taken to solve all 32 games. Previously it was 116:25 by mickyiw in masters # 27. However, the 119:42 wasn't the slowest registered by the masters winner. In #160 mickyiw took 119:43 for 28 wins and in #164 WRAC took 119:44 for 31 wins. In all three of these masters they had already won it and solved another game to ice the cake. mabb is the only other masters winner to finish a game in the final minute, #142, 119:37 for 30 wins and in so doing snatched victory from goatee who was sitting on 29 wins in 63:22. |
| 2004-05-09 | goatee | Winners comments ... well, I've never been good with them, at least not as creatively inspiring as WRAC or mabb. Can I be minimalist? "It feels good to be back on the tourney circuit, and to compete with such a fine group of players, whose talented rank seems to be growing every week. This should be a fun summer ..." |
| 2004-04-04 | ty07480 | Maybe it was Daylight Savings, or maybe davidxz300 had everyone over at his place for the big birthday party. Whatever the reason, there was a deep cavernous void tonight where so many of you speedsters usually are. It was a bit drafty by ourselves, but those of us who did come enjoyed a roller coaster of a tournament.
The early games were uneventful, though certainly no stellar performance for me. I was experimenting with dragging rather than clicking cards, but that hardly explains me having to play #3 (an 8x4) several times, and a half a dozen other games more than once. At 27 games I was happy to find myself within sight of the lead, and it was about this time I noticed WRAC was playing. At 28 games, it looked like it was over. I believe the order was Burtle, myself, and WRAC all at 28, with the remaining four games all unwon--an 8x2, a 6x4, a 6x5, and a 7x3. I dread six-column games, so I went after the 7x3. This soon proved fruitless, so I kept a close watch on the game stats to see if one of the others might be beaten, knowing only too well that the best I could hope for with this strategy is second place. That's when the real fun began. In the middle of my umpteenth attempt at the 7x3, I checked the stats and found that two of the others had been beaten, the 8x2 and the 6x5. WRAC had moved into first, but oddly, no one else moved up, so the 6x5 win must have come from someone further down the board. Even more surprising, going back to my 7x3 I realized I was staring at a breakthrough I hadn't seen earlier, and seconds later I had caught up to WRAC at 29 with at least two more games winnable. Did I mention I dread six-column games? Of the two remaining, I happily chose the 8x2 over the 6x5. Following WRAC's advice of trying something completely different when you're getting nowhere, I finally pulled this one off and, incredibly, discovered I was the first to 30 games. The last 20 minutes were mostly spent waiting to see another amazing come-from-behind WRAC victory, as I was getting nowhere with the 6x5. But I guess after five years of playing on this site fortune couldn't hold out any longer, and I got my first Master's win. Music selection tonight: I usually set my MP3 collection on random, but tonight my wife had the latest Mormon Tabernacle Choir CD playing in the next room (Consider the Lillies, I think it's called), so maybe having angels singing in the background steadied my nerves just enough. There's a slim chance I can play in next week's Master's, so if you could all kindly stay away for just one more week ... ;p |
| 2004-03-28 | WRAC | The real story here is not so much my 31-game victory, but the fact that it took mickyiw a mere 47:08 to fly through the first 30. (25 minutes later, I reached the same total in 72:58.) But I'm guessing she took a break to work on a Unifying Theory of Physics, most likely getting stuck somewhere in the minutiae of Lie groups (satisfying Jacobi identities can be tricky at times) and thereby allowed me to pass her by solving 6x5 5995-8 (in less than 7 minutes - what's up with that?) and claim victory in tonight's battle.
Once again, I took a risk with my digital music, picking the '70s channel again, and was almost done in by The Floaters' "Float On" ("Aquarius. And my name is Ralph."), but fortunately I was already past 31 games at that point and managed to survive. As for the mystery guest, we still don't know who it might be, although mabb, Laffman and JeffMo have all denied involvement. |
| 2004-03-14 | marginwalker | I was thinking seriously of skipping the tournament, my head was pounding. But I had just finished watching Maryland (my favorite college hoop team) beat Duke in thrilling fashion, so I felt I had to play, because apparently good fortune was being handed out and I didn't want to miss it; I settled at the computer with "Fear the Turtle" ringing in my head. A quick glance at the board, and I felt that the tourney would go down like a "micky monday" - lately the masters brackets have been short in the 10 sums, and there were no 6x4's. I resolved to play super fast until only the "money games" were left. I skipped game 1 and tackled the board playing more or less in order. I usually play all 12 and 11 sum games first, including the 6x5's, then cleanse the palate with the 13's to get ready for the stumpers. Game 8 stumped me so after a few tries I passed it on for later. After getting all the 12 and 11 games except for 8, I crushed the 13's and looked at the leader board, I was first to 28 games, with mabb and crunch close behind. The four games remaining were pretty tough, especially 1 and 8, so a sub-1 hour finish was not in the cards, contrary to what I believed at the outset. My recollection of the finish was I played 8, then 1, then 26, then 21. I actually attempted 21 (the 8x2) numerous times before switching to 26 and solving it quickly. The "path" on 21 was fairly obvious, but getting the right sequence eluded me, especially as I glanced at the scores and saw mabb had completed 31 games before I did; but after 26 fell, 21 went down quickly after 2 tries. A quick look at the leader board, and I saw that I had won, by only 27 seconds! This was my first (and hopefully not the last) masters win. Notable no-shows were laffman, mickyiw and goatee, I doubt I could have beaten all of them if they showed up, and WRAC (according to his comments) got stuck on a game and I didn't have to suffer his late-tournament mastery. Mandatory musical accompaniment discussion: sorry, there was none, I always play in silence. Thanks to everyone who played for an exciting tourney, I look forward to competing in the next one. |
| 2004-03-07 | WRAC | SERENDIPITY You might think that a game solved by only one player would indicate the game was solved late in the tourney, perhaps "stealing" victory from the early leader. Not so in this case. Feeling rather brazen, I decided to at least take a chance on 6x5 7556-11 early in tonight's action. Although far from obvious, I didn't see any signs of impossibility, so I kept playing it until I got it. I didn't check the clock, but I doubt I spent more than 10 minutes on it. Of course, 10 minutes early in the tourney puts you back pretty far in the standings, so I was then faced with the task of moving slowly back up the leaderboard. As I did, I noticed with increasing suprise that no one else had solved my 6x5, giving me at least a little hope. Finally, I was tied at 30 games, and I was still the only winner of the 6x5. Expecting mickyiw or marginwalker (the two other players with 30 games) to get it any minute now, I rushed through the only other solved game, a 7x3, and blew it several times. (It didn't help that "The Pina Colada Song" came on my digital music channel during my first attempt - that's the risk one takes when tuning to the '70s channel.) But the song finally ended, my head cleared, I solved the 7x3, and was shocked to see that STILL no one else had solved the 6x5! So I went on to the one remaining game, 6x5 24618-9, which was completely unsolved. This looked thoroughly impossible at first, and I was about to pack it in when I saw an approach that seemed rather promising. A few minutes later, I had it... and STILL no one else had solved my 6x5. I then went on to other pressing matters (like eating dinner and changing the music channel, not necessarily in that order) and returned at 8:00 pm to see how many people had finally figured out the first 6x5. NO ONE! And only Burtle had eventually figured out the other one. It's times like these when an overly optimistic person might think he'd reached a new level of freecell solving skill. But alas I knew the truth - I was flat-out, categorically, absolutely and unequivocably LUCKY! |
| 2004-02-22 | WRAC | Did you know that the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Seuss is coming up? He would have turned 100 on Tuesday, March 2. Be sure to celebrate.
Now that we've got that public service announcement out of the way, we can move on to the more serious business of commenting on this week's Masters Tournament. Was time for the Masters, I had to miss lunch, |
| 2004-02-15 | mabb | If I had a magic wand, I would love to wave it and bestow one sweet upset win like this to every player who has ever been in a tourny. It's just more fun than *almost* anything, and I wish EVERY ONE could do it at least once in their lifetime (on nights that *I'm* otherwise occupied, of course!) I'm guessing that mickyiw gave up on those two unwon games long ago, and actually, I considered it as well. I always thought the 8x2 looked a little more winnable, but at least once or twice I changed over to the 6x4, if nothing else than for a change of scenery. But the 8x2 kept beckoning.........IF *ONLY* that 8x2 had been on the slate LAST week, instead of that blasted 6x5 that hung me up.....THEN I would have had the coveted Master's Trifecta - three consecutive wins that only WRAC and mickyiw have been able to accomplish (if I understand correctly)! But I'm still most gratified to have won 3 out of 4 weeks, a measure of consistency that is quite unusual for me. Of course, some credit is due to my evil twin, who has been screaming at me to give her the Winner's Comment Pen. I'm quite reluctant to go that far, for obvious reasons, but I will say this much: the voo-doo doll scheme she dreamed up wasn't so hare-brained after all! You see, several weeks back, I demanded that my evil-twin start helping me win some master's tournies, or else I might have to kick her back to the pit, ya know? Well, before I knew it I had all these dolls lined up near my keyboard, labelled "W", "m", "g", "L", "v", etc. I was pretty dubious at first, but also desperate, so I let her proceed. Now, some of the pins were labelled with obvious afflictions, such as "W" was "Lawrence Welk muzac", and "v" was "continuous night-time feedings". But others were not so obvious, such as "L" had a pin labelled "SCC", which I didn't understand at the time. But, anyway she assured me she was on top of things. And darned if this scheme didn't start working almost immediately! If only that "stomach flu" pin had worked properly on micky last week, I'd have that trifecta in the bag! But upon hearing of "L's" close encounter with the mental health system - even though he tried to convince us it wasn't *really* derived from any particular Netcell event - my guilt was more than I could bear. So I decided to put them away for awhile (notice I didn't say THROW them away!), at least until I feel desperate again! BTW Reporter, thanks so much for your awesome play by play last week! I'm glad SOMEONE (thnx WRAC!) finally had the good sense to put those reports into the winner's column, where they won't be scrolled away into oblivion, as on the discussion board! I vote for making that a permanent tradition. (And when you find yourself enjoying a written account of your own defeat by a 30 minute margin, you know it's either REALLY good writing, or you're a hopeless ego-maniac, or BOTH!!) Also, tonight's background noise was one of the Pink Panther classics with Peter Sellers, accompanied by lots of wild giggles. Until next time.......... :)mabb |
| 2004-02-08 | mickyiw | FROM REPORTER: After only five minutes into this tournament I wrote down mickyiw, EMU, mabb and WRAC as a possible finishing order, once I knew that mabb was actually there (3:48 for her first win). A quick scan of the games showed a tame lineup with only one 6x5 to potentially make things interesting, and the way 6x5s have been served up lately, this one could also be tame. There were no 10-sums at all and only a couple of 8x3s and 9x2s each to potentially slow things down.
However, a quick glance at the 6x5 convinced me that it could be tough, hence my prediction at 5 minutes, figuring that mickyiw and EMU would set the pace and have enough time to solve the 6x5, if it could be done, before the freakout specialists arrived. Of course mickyiw is a specialist at everything and having reached 31 games, surprisingly in second place in 48:15 after leading most of the time, behind EMU with 31 in 46:49, micky took only 9:58 to solve the 6x5 and win the masters in 58:13. The real story of this tourney and proven wildcard game was the #9 7x5 5059-11 which turned out to be the second hardest game statistically. mickyiw said later that this game slowed her down enough for EMU to overcome a 6 game defecit and actually take the lead at 31 wins. She had reached 30 wins in 36:22 and therefore took nearly 12 minutes to win this penultimate game, no doubt having also attempted it earlier. The tourney had an unusually slow start for a masters, with Loner first away winning the #1 9x2 in 1:29, followed by bluerose 1:34, aschdog 1:36, WRAC 1:38, EMU 1:40 and mickyiw 1:43, four of whom played the same #1 9x2, the other two games played being #31 and #32. Then aschdog won a second game in 2:43 while the board quickly filled to 16 players, but there was no sign of defending champion mabb yet. Loner took back the lead at 4 wins and a little later Burtle grabbed it to be at 6 wins in 7:49 from mickyiw 8:22, Loner 9:22 and bluerose 9:33 also on 6. Suddenly micky bolted ahead to 14 wins after 17 minutes from Loner on 12, EMU on 11, Burtle and pegasus0516 on 10, mabb on 9 with bluerose, WRAC, mike_la_jolla, EllieMay and aschdog next all on 7. At this point there were only two unsolved games, curiously one of them being #19 8x4, which your Reporter duly tackled and solved four minutes later, only to find that suddenly #19 had 8 wins registered! After another 16 minutes it was mickyiw on 28 wins and seemingly invincible from mabb, EMU and Loner on 22, Burtle 19, pegasus 18, bluerose, aschdog and pthomas187 all on 15 and WRAC on 13 making up the top 10, while eventual 4th placegetter davidxz300 was struggling around 16th place. The #30 6x6 was also proving difficult, with only 2 wins at this stage. However the excitement mounted during 40-50 minutes while mickyiw had stalled on the #9 7x5 allowing several players to close in and it was EMU who took the lead at 31 and it looked like that could be the final result, with micky winning the wildcard game soon after. Loner (49:57) and mabb (52:11) joined the leaders on 31 and it became a four-way battle. It turned out mabb had only six minutes to claim a third consecutive masters as micky solved the 6x5 and it was all over. mabb ended up taking 32 minutes to solve this final game to be runner-up yet again and it was no surprise to find WRAC claiming the bronze in 93:20, having been in about 10th place with only 24 wins by the time micky had finished. A consolation prize for mabb was to defeat WRAC three weeks in a row, probably a first! Meanwhile many players lined up behind EMU (5th place) to finish on 31 wins, but it was davidxz300 who alone was the only other player to win the 6x5 and take 4th place, well done david! I think you are a legitimate contender as a debut master’s winner in the not too distant future. It was an enjoyable tournament to watch and play and congrats to mickyiw on your 51st masters win in what turned out to be your 100th masters tournament! Reporter |
| 2004-02-01 | mabb | Holy Smoke! I never saw how close the finish was until I refreshed the screen well AFTER the close of the tourny! A 32-second margin doesn't leave much room for strutting, now does it? David, you must have been gnashing your teeth at this narrow miss! If I had been the one in second place by only 32 seconds, let me tell you, there would have been a TORRENT of weeping, wailing and teeth-gnashing around here! Especially because for tonight's tourny, I had more computer/internet/modem trouble than I've had in a VERY long time. But before that, my trouble started with a 6x6. As is my habit, I began with game #4, since I work the columns right to left, just to be different, only skipping over the 10-sums and 6x5's. In this tourny, game #4 turned out to be one of the three most difficult games for me - 6x6 15817-9. I usually face an ego-deflating 12-sum at some point in every master's, but I really hate to face it so early on. The problem with getting stuck on a 12-sum is that you KNOW it is probably winnable. There is the very rare 7x5 or 6x6 which will not fall, but they are not often seen in a 2-hour tourny. So the choice is to hammer it out, or move on and try not to let your attitude be completely debilitated. Now, what I always WANT to do is hammer it out, but time and again, it turns out better for me if I will quit after only 2 or 3 tries and come back to it at the end. Invariably, I will get it on the first or second try this way, though in the meantime I'm usually beating myself up over it mentally. I believe I devoted at least five minutes to this 6x6, before I moved on. But because it was a 6x6, and I know WRAC always starts with a 6x6, I was curious to check the game stats and see if it had been won. That's when my computer trouble began, because the browser would not permit me to open another window! I was thinking, "This does not bode well at all!" So for the first 25-30 minutes, I was wasting precious seconds between games trying everything I could think of to open a game stats window. (Note to self: next time, make sure another window is open BEFORE the tourny starts!) Finally, I hit the "back" button, which completely froze my screen. From that point ensued 8-10 minutes of sheer hell and agitation going through the entire re-boot, re-dial, re-loading of Netcell graphics, etc, every step in the process moving S-L-O-W-E-R than the step before. You can only *imagine* my aggravation! When I got back on, and found the game stats page, I found the 6x6 had yet to be won (minor vindication victory), and I was in something like 28th place, with Vishna at the top. (Hey, what happened Vishna? Did the baby need a feeding? I guess my little voo-doo doll tricks are starting to work! hee,hee,hee ) At this point, I knew I had some major time to make up, so I just got mad and stomped my way up to 27 games. My left-overs were #4 (the 6X6), #5 (a 7x4-11), #20 (the unwon 7x3), #26 (an 8x3-11), and #32 (another 6x6!). Game #5 and #32 had the most wins, so I took those on first. Now, at 29 games, I was curious about my rank, and surprisingly found myself in third behind david and burtle! Of course, WRAC was in the wings somewhere, and you always have to wonder about him. Hopefully he got bogged down early trying to win one of those nasty 6x6's! (Or else I was simply having a TON of beginner's luck with my new voo-doo dolls!) I tackled game #26 and #4 next (sure enough, I got that 6x6 after only two tries!), but found that david had still beaten me to the 31 mark. Vishna had apparently quit the tourny; WRAC was still fairly well back, and there weren't that many 13-sums for him to have hidden up his sleeve. So I was saying "Hooray for david!", but of course my goodwill could not overcome my (cough,cough) slightly competitive nature, so I had to at least take a peek at that 7x3! Turns out there were several good avenues of attack, and I was pretty sure it was winnable, and it very quickly WAS! I am always shocked whenever I win a master's tourny, but tonight was even more unexpected because I had won last week, and usually I don't win again for several weeks or months! So miracles never cease! Last week was my best time ever for finishing, and now I have set a new personal record of two in a row! Let's see.....how many more consecutive wins to catch up to mickyiw? I think somewhere in the double-digits - eek! I guess I'd better just be satisfied with setting personal records, rather than Netcell records. :) After the tourny, it was time for some SuperBowl fun, and the Patriot's field goal win in the last 10 seconds was a perfect ending to the evening! Fortunately, we had been channel-surfing during the half-time show, because we don't watch MTV and my kids don't know those perfomers (thank God for small favors). Wardrobe malfunction?!!? Gimme a break! Thanks again for the great contest, everybody, and special thanks to Denny for that hilarious "bear breast" bit! TTFN! |
| 2004-01-11 | WRAC | A Tale of Two 6x5s (and 61 Evil Twins) The premonition came to me early Saturday afternoon. The NetCELL world was to be taken over by Evil Twins and it was up to WRAC to save it. At first, I dismissed this seemingly absurd idea as the hallucination of a man who had just run 10 miles in 1-degree (Farenheit) air. But what if I were right? No time to contemplate the consequences, there was only time to sit down and play 32 deals of freecell as fast as possible. Setting the digital music channel to Classic Rock, I soon found myself listening to Ozzy wailing out Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Was this a direct comment on my state of mind or perhaps a more subtle allusion to Ozzy Osbourne's Evil Twin? You know, the one who wanders around in a stupor on MTV, a generation removed from the man who invented the Heavy Metal genre thirty years earlier. Time would soon tell. An early glance at the leader board showed mick126's Evil Twin leading the pack, but this caused no terror in my heart - mick only plays the first half of the Masters these days. (Actually, I would find out that mick's Evil Twin stops play twice as quickly, bailing out after 25 minutes.) But further down the list was the name I feared most. Yes, it was the Evil Twin of the glamorous and sultry, yet oh-so-dangerous, mabb. The one and the same mabb who had come from two games behind in the Freakout two days past to blow through an oh-so-difficult 6x4, and beat me by an oh-so-demoralizing 25 minutes. And the one and the same mabb who warmed up for tonight's Masters by oh-so-demolishing a fine field in last night's Masters Prep. The one and the same mabb, or... perhaps... her Evil Twin? Headquarters would not be pleased. I began to wonder if I were the right man for the job. Why hadn't they sent micky? Or goatee? Or Laffman? Surely they had a better chance of defeating the Evil Twins. But what if, gasp, they too had been taken over by their Evil Twins? What if only WRAC could save the world? I settled down with renewed purpose. As David Bowie sang "Panic in Detroit" (although I live nowhere near the Motor City, this didn't help one bit), I went after some of the 6x6s and 6x5s which had already been won, and remained within a few games of the lead. Well, until I reached #3 7x5 15625-9, that is. The fact that it had only been solved by one Twin so far did not fully prepare me for the amount of time I would spend on this game. I finally got it, but, now around the 30-minute mark, I had (according to bluerose) fallen to 18th place. Just to rub it in, Stevie Wonder started to sing, "You Haven't Done Nothin," and I thought to myself, "No, I haven't." But I kept attacking the 6-column games (according to Reporter, the eleven of them likely constitutes a record) and made a little progress. Yes, a "little" progress. Reporter later informed me I had only moved up to 14th place at the 1-hour mark. The truth is, I was too frightened to look myself. But when I did finally gather up the courage a little later, there was "Evil Joe", the Evil Twin of jbranick3, leading the pack, followed closely by mabb, and Crunch's ET, who had also squeaked past me in the last Freakout. But then there was Elton John, singing "I'm Still Standing," and there was WRAC running off a bunch of 9x3s and quickly making up some ground. This worked better than expected, and after 22 games, I was not only leading the pack, but, I still had the three 13-sum games conveniently tucked in my back pocket. Little did I know the horror story was just about to start. A quick check of the game stats indicated that #27 6x5 19517-8 had now been solved. (Remember, this is a Tale of Two 6x5s; the Evil Twins thing is just a side plot to distract you from the fact that, if you've read one set of my winner's comments, you've read 'em all.) So now here we are, just reaching the crux of my saga. Warning: game #27is freecell hell. There's no rhyme or reason to it, and I didn't even solve it logically. I just tried everything I could until something finally worked. But that was later. Much later. In my first attack, which lasted perhaps 20 minutes, I got ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. Most people think NOWHERE is in the middle of Antartica, or perhaps suburban Des Moines, but I can tell you right now that NOWHERE is where you end up if you try to solve this game in any sort of logical manner. Anyway, as I said, I stumbled around for 20 minutes or so until I heard Robert Plant start singing, "Hey Hey What Can I Do," and I did only thing I could do: I quit playing that infernal game. By now, I was back in around 7th place, fearing that I choked another one away (what if only one person solved that deal, and they weren't even in contention?), and feeling not too pleased with myself. Hell, never mind the Evil Twins and my hopes of saving the world, what had become of freecell skills? Was I truly this awful? Now, one of the 6x4s had been solved, and I got that pretty quickly. Really, there was only one reasonable approach to it, and once you found it, it opened up nicely, but it took me a few minutes to find the reasonable approach, and, after I solved it, I was still in third place. Now the only remaining unsolved game was #27, so I reluctantly went back to it and continued to get nowhere. Finally I realized why mabb (and most other rational people, I assume) hate these 6-column games so much. They can be FRUSTRATING! But just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, I found a breakthrough and solved it. As I listened to Phil Collins sing, "I've been waiting for this moment for all of my life," I knew EXACTLY what he meant. But, alas, another check of the leader board found me STILL in third place. Now there were only four games left, and none of them had been solved. With three 6x4s and one 6x5s, I'm sure you could guess which one I chose, even if you didn't know the title of this story. But here's the amazing part. I selected the 6x5 (#10 31623-10), took 15 or 20 seconds to find the key cards I would need to free, and... then... SOLVED IT ON THE FIRST TRY! You might think that was total luck, and I'm not going to disagree with you, but at least give me credit for saving the world from the scourge of the Evil Twins, will ya? By the way, of the three 6x4s which remained unsolved, two of them, (16730-9 and 13231-11) looked like they might offer some opportunities, but I was never to able to clear them. Thanks to mabb and everyone else for another memorable battle! WRAC COMMENTS from mabb: runner-up again! (AKA: run her down again!) I know you were absolutely in your element tonight, WRAC! I know this because of the size of my headache at only 30 minutes into the tourny. At this early point I was already so disgusted I wanted to quit! I had been wrestling with an 8x4 (#19) for several minutes, and finally moved on without winning it - a MAJOR defeat for my attitude. Still, after the first run through of the games, I think I was in third place, with joe (jbranick3) in first and WRAC in second. So I tried to think "chin-up", but looking at the remaining games, my chin just sank through the floor! Let's see..... one 7x5 (#3) (for shame - a 12-sum still remaining!), seven 11-sums (5 of them 6x5's, of COURSE!), oh, and then four 10-sums to tidy up - ALL OF THEM 6x4's!!!! Major eye-rolling: This looked worse than a Freak-out Friday. I was thinking "I sure hope joe wins, because I just don't have the stomach for this mess!" Then I pictured WRAC, chair dancing to Ozzy Osborne tunes, clicking away with a gleeful, yet diabolical grin on his face, knowing this plate of games was virtually made to order for him, and I shouted "sPit! (we're generally a G-rated household) If I can't beat him, at least I can make him afraid - VERY, VERY afraid!" So I attacked those remaining games with a vengeance: Triple BAM - the 7x5 #3, 7x4 #12 and 9x2 #9 went down. But only 6x5's and 6x4's left! Uhg! "Just make him afraid!" I kept reminding myself. I think I tried several minutes on 6x5 #27, which showed one or two wins, but I couldn't get anywhere with it. So I went on to 6x5 #2, 6x5 #32, and 6x5 #14 (I kept a paper grid in front of me this week, thank goodness!). Then I went back to #27, which was really ugly. I still couldn't get it, so I spent a few minutes looking at the 4 unsolved games, hoping to get brilliantly lucky with one of them. I didn't, but I DID find out which game would be the best one to go after when the time came. So back to #27 - and this time - a breakthrough! I checked the standings to see I was tied with joe at 28, and WRAC was in third - BUT he probably was saving the 9x4's, as is his wicked custom, so I knew he could shoot up to first any moment. I went directly to the final 6x5 #10, feeling very sure it was winnable - and it WAS! As I checked the game stats first (a self-torture technique I've acquired from WRAC) oh-no! TWO wins, meaning I was second, but to whom? Oh, please let it be joe! NO! NOT AGAIN! WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE FIND WRAC A NEW HOBBY?!!! Heavy sigh - seven minute margin! - heavy sobs - probably the amount of time I wasted on that stupid 8x4. I went to work on the 6x4's, hoping against hope for an upset, but it was not to be! I had already upset him in the pm Friday freak-out last week (if I may so boldy mention my own triumphs!), so I guess one upset per week is my quota. Well, here's to you, WRascally WRAC - the scoundrel I most love to hate! Congrats again! Oh by the way - tonight's movie feature was set aside for the Packers vs. Eagles play-off game. We were rooting for the Packers, but oh well! Hey WRAC, could I interest you in football as a new hobby, perhaps? ;) |
| 2003-12-28 | WRAC | Let's start with an obvious statement this week. The Beatles were the greatest rock and roll band ever. Hard to legitimately dispute that. But it does beg what I consider to be the Third Most Pressing Question of Our Time - Who was the second greatest band ever? I'm not ready to cast my vote yet, but I nearby nominate Ben Folds Five (plus Ben Folds' later solo work). The quantity of work may not be there yet, but the quality is. Just this past weekend, I was blown away by "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner" for the umpteenth time. But not, I should clarify, during the tourney. At tourney time, I was once again tuned to the digital music on my cable system.
Huh? What's that? You want to know which channel? Um... Well, okay, I'll admit it, I had that '70s channel on again. Guess I'm trying to relive my teen years again, although goodness knows why. This week's tourney featured mick126 jumping out to a several game lead and holding it for quite a while. Which brings us to what I consider to be the Second Most Pressing Question of Our Time - why does mick126 so often stop playing the Masters halfway through? No clue here, but I do know that eventually, as is so often the case, he was caught and passed by the Dangerous mabb. Meanwhile, the radio station dude (WRAC, that is) appeared endlessly mired in 7th-8th place, albeit with a secret weapon of sorts - three 13-sum games conveniently saved for a mid-tourney break. So, after tying the Dangerous mabb at 27 games, he quickly rattled off the two 10x3s and the 9x4 to reach 30 games with a three-game lead. This would have looked impressive if anyone had been fooled, but he's pulled this trick enough times before that I'm guessing he only ellicited a few yawns, if that. (Not sure where that third-person stuff came from - probably from my inability to admit to being so devious in the first person.) So, there I was, once again facing Laffman's Dilemma. Two games to go, and neither had been solved. Curiously, neither looked particularly tough at first glance, but that, it turned out, was deceptive. I tried the 7x4 (25537-9) a few times, but then decided the 6x5 (14358-9) was more likely, so I spent the rest of the time on that. Surprisingly, it took over 30 minutes for the next group (marcia7, Burtle and the Dangerous mabb) to catch up, so I only had to sweat about 7 minutes that someone was about to pass me. No one did though, and the tourney ended with the four of us tied at 30 games. And we all lived happily ever after. The end. But wait! Someone had solved the 7x4! But who? And why didn't they win the tourney with 31 games? Clearly, this is the single Most Pressing Question of Our Time. Fortunately, we now know the answer. The Dangerous mabb has admitted to being the culprit (I've attached her confession below). After reading it, you'll see that my apparently impressive 33:03 victory really should have been a second place finish. And I'm not even going to claim that I would have solved the 7x4 if I had known it solvable, because I went back to it today, and it took me OVER 60 minutes to get it. I'm tempted to call it the single toughest tournament game I've ever encountered (or perhaps second to that 7x5 which took the site over six months to solve), and I think it should be duly noted that the Dangerous mabb solved it first. Now you know why she is so DANGEROUS! mabb'S COMMENT: How to "draft" yourself from 2nd to 4th place! I win the dunce award for the Sun. Master's tourny! First of all, I assumed that I didn't have much chance of winning. I figured I would be too rusty to be a real contender, having been out for more than a week with all the Christmas activities. So I played half-heartedly through the first 90 minutes, not checking the statistics OR standings, just counting myself out from the start. When I finally checked, I discovered two things - I had spent a lot of time on a 6x5-9 (game #9, I think) which had yet to be won, and secondly, with all my goofin' off, I was in second place behind WRAC - he had 30 games and I had 27! I thought I would be lucky to be in the top 10, and here I was somewhat close to the leader after all - well, at least closer than anyone else! Man, did I KICK MYSELf, or what? Even if I lose, I never like to make it easy for the winner, especially WRAC! (I know how much he despises those easy-breezy wins!) When I looked for the three games I needed to go after, I mentally remembered games #25 (the 6x5-11, which I HADN'T been working on), #27 (the only 6x4) and #11 (a 7 column game). The first two had more wins recorded, so I went after them first, and they fell pretty quickly. But as I went back to the tourny selection board, I forget the precise game number, but remembered it was a 7 column game. I assumed the winnable game was the 7x4 (#18), rather than the 7x3 (#11). So I quickly clicked on game #18 without double-checking the stats, and it took me WAY too long! But I finished just before time ran out and checked the standings to find I had dropped to fourth, AND one person had won one of the unwon games! But everyone was still at 30 games. WHAT? Wait a minute..... that was ME! DUNCE! I had won the unwon 7x4! I scrambled to get to the 7x3 at that point, but had only a few minutes remaining. I finished the 31st game at 8 minutes after the tourny closed. Ouch! And to top it all off, I had NO distractions to claim this week - the trio of short people that I live with are spending the week-end with the grandparents - hooray! But OH! *If only* I had pressed a little harder! Oh well! It was a fun way to get back into the tourny scene. :) Congrats, again, WRAC! And speaking of "drafting", I have finally gotten caught up with the past two weeks of discussion board topics. Darn it Laffman! You are just dangerously persuasive with your words! I'm desperate for a cogent way to disagree with you! But all I CAN say is that the thought of NOT having the game stats to use (or misuse, as the case may be), really strikes fear into my heart. Mainly because I am more often the chaser than the leader, and I think it would be better for me to endure the penalty on the rare occasions when I am the leader, rather than endure the disadvantage of not having the stats when chasing. Also, I agree with Ty, that I don't think the tournys would be as much fun. However, it's not all about me (I keep reminding myself), so even though I might hate myself in the morning for being so recklessly agreeable, I'd be willing to try it if everyone else wants to. (OH, please, OH please, Denny, don't DO IT!) ;) TTFN, friends! ~mabb~ |
| 2003-12-21 | WRAC | An early peek at the game list this week almost set me drooling. The 6x5s were back (five of 'em), along with a couple of 8x2s and three 7x4s. After last week's Easy Escapade, I was much relieved to see I might actually have a chance. A glance at the leader board a few minutes later showed my chances improved even further - no Laffman, mickyiw, goatee, mabb, Burtle or Crunch to battle this week. Sure, vishna, EMU, mick126 and others were going to make things tough, but it could have been a lot worse.
However, as time passed, I remained (along with marginwalker) a few games behind vishna. It turned out that many games simply weren't as difficult as advertised. You never know with 8x2s; you can zip right through some of them with little mental effort. But I somehow managed to avoid my nasty habit of turning relatively easy deals into 20-minute epics, and got to 29 games at the head of the pack. Here I reached the Laffman Dilemma: none of the remaining three games had been solved yet, so I had to quickly find the most likely winner. I chose the 6x5 first, and not seeing any definite indication that it was unsolvable, attacked it first. A few botched attempts didn't hurt me too much, as I was still the first to solve it and the first to 30 games. Time for Laffman Dilemma II. This time I chose the 7x4 (30492-11), but two attempts yielded little, so I turned to the 8x2 (12732-7). I had less trouble with this one, but at the same time, I could sense it was a game that wasn't going to be solved by a lot of people (funny how you can just tell sometimes, even if you see the solution fairly quickly). As the first one to 31, I still wasn't safe though - vishna was close at my heels at 30. Time for another look at the 7x4. Tough as it was, I never said to myself, "oh, this can't be won." There were just too many possibilities. And when you have a lot of possibilities, statistically, one of them is often a winner. My guess is that most people cleared column 6, but then weren't able to make much progress. That was me for a while, until I finally found a way to get the red nines in column 2 into play. After doing so, I played very... deliberately... and... slowly... I sure wasn't going to mess up and have to start over. So that's pretty much the end of the story. Unbeknownst to me, vishna had tied me at 31 games during one of my final attempts at the 7x4, but in the end, no one else was lucky enough to solve it, and my lead held up. For music, I again chose the digital music that comes with my cable package, this time selecting the '70s channel. Lots of guilty pleasures to be sure (not that I'm going to admit to any of them by name here), but also a few tunes which took great resilence to endure. Specifically (and here I will mention names), I'm talking about the most unbearable song of the '70s, Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy." And that's no easy feat in a decade that brought us "Kung Fu Fighting," "Heaven on the 7th Floor," and more songs by Donny Osmond than can be enumerated here. Once again, thanks to Denny for hosting, to vishna and the others for some tough competition, and to Laffman, micky et al., for taking a well-deserved week off. |
| 2003-12-07 | Laffman | It felt great to win this one, not only because it ends a Master's dry spell for me, but also because it was the first time I won one that Reporter did a play-by-play on. Reporter's contributions always make things more interesting, and have contributed a lot to the higher-than-ever level of interest in tourneys, so thanks again, Reporter!
I've lost enough tourneys in the final 2-3 games to change my use of the leaderboard a bit. I still use the game stats (usually around the 20-game mark or so) for game selection, but I avoid looking at the leaders until I'm down to what I think are the unsolvables. That way, I'm less likely to witness the point at which I fall down the leaderboard. This week, I first looked at the leaders about 10 minutes after solving 29, when I thought the two remaining 7x3's and an 8x2 were unsolvable. I was in second place, one second slower than mabb (!!!), so I wasn't ready to give up entirely. As Reporter guessed in his play-by-play, the #1 8x2 had been my 29th game; I was not the first to solve it, so the game stats already showed it solvable by the time I got to it. After that, the last 3 games all looked ugly, but the #14 7x3 seemed to bend more than the other two. It never *looked* solvable to me, but after several attempts, I was able to string some mini-attacks together in the right order, and the game finally opened up. I don't remember it any more specifically than that. Getting to 30 first was quite a relief, but with several excellent players in the field, I didn't feel entirely safe until time expired. I worried that WRAC may have been trapped under a heavy object after 29, because it's practically unheard of for me to finish with a higher game total. Mickyiw and goatee generously helped me by skipping this one, and vishna helped by starting late. Vishna's speed to 29 was scary, though, and had she started on time, I think it very likely she would have won this one. Kudos to davidxz300 for getting that last 7x3 much faster than I did. (For once, the lead cushion saved me.) My sympathies to mabb for getting edged out at the end - I know your pain. My money is on mabb to win another Master's before I do. WRAC, I hope you've escaped injury and will be more careful around heavy objects next time around. It was a solid field, but to the formidable no-shows, we miss you when you're gone...but thanks anyway, just this once. Thanks, as always, to Denny, for a great site! |
| 2003-11-16 | WRAC | My own bias not withstanding, I thought this was the most exciting tournament in quite some time. Alas, there was no report from Reporter (oh, the things you start to take for granted), so I'll contribute my recollections, and invite others to do so as well. Post them to the discussion board, and I'll paste them in here.
Last week, I was exhausted, but this week I got more sleep and was feeling more alert. Would it translate to a return to the top 3? I could hardly wait to find out. A bit late perhaps, I decided to experiment with the digital music channels on my cable system. I started with the Progressive/Alternative channel, but this was a plodding disaster. Much as I like Neil Young, try finishing an 8x4 in under three minutes while listening to him. Forget it. Equivalent of stuffing an elephant in a microwave. I needed something more upbeat, but not so mindlessly repetitive as the Disco or Dance channels. After (ouch!) 30-40 seconds or so of fiddling (thank goodness this time didn't come back to haunt me), I found the New Wave channel - just what I needed! Or so I thought until a Sting song came on a few minutes later. Hey, if I wanted to listen to Sting, I would have gone back to Progressive/Alternative! Good time to get those easy 9x3s out of the way. But the next song, "Escalator of Life" by Robert Hazard, convinced me I was in the right place, and my speed picked up along with my mood. This went on for 40 minutes or so, as I sailed into 4th place, and then... BAM... I ran right into the Wall... Of... 6x6 10067-11. 15 attempts and at least as many minutes later, I found a solution, but now I didn't have the heart to see how far I had tumbled in the standings. Instead, I started solving games again, and, finally getting up the nerve to see where I was, found myself back in 4th place. (Not wishing to get discouraged, I didn't check to see who was in front of me or how many more games they had sovled.) All that was left was 8x3 9649-11 and 4 10-sum games, so I naturally attempted the 8x3, just assuming it had been solved already. At this point, I had NO IDEA that I was in a 4-way tie (being well behind on time, of course) for 4th place, with mickyiw, Laffman and (I think) vishna, all of us having solved 27, and none of the remaining five having been won. The 8x3 was a bit tricky, but nowhere nearly as nasty as the 6x6, and a few minutes later, I had it. I could only stare in disbelief when I found myself leading the pack as the only solver of this game so far. Four games left. One thing I've learned (sort of) is to try each of the four games once, decide which is most likely to be winnable, and concentrate on that one. So I did. 6x4 17446-7: Hmm. Maybe. 6x4 12679-8: Looks pretty hopeless. 8x2 15111-9: Doubt it. 8x2 17561-10: No friggin' way. Not gonna waste any time here. But, oh wait, I could move this card. And maybe that card. But it's never going to break... Why am I wasting my time? Don't know. Something compelled me to keep playing - it was such an INTERESTING game. And, then, suddenly, a breakthrough and a win. Back to the standings. Four (or so) people had the 8x3 now, but none of the others had been won, so I was still in first. Feeling pretty good about 8x2s now, I then tried the other one for a while, but didn't make any progress. So I checked the standings again... AND THERE WAS LAFFMAN, now with 29 wins also! AND, OH MY GOD, HE SOLVED THE 6x4! (17446-7) So now it was a race. Could I get the 6x4 before Laffman got the 8x2? I had a good idea how to attack it, but I was playing too quickly, not looking far enough ahead, making a mistake, restarting, making another mistake further down the line, restarting, making mistake 3 even further down the line, restarting... and so on through perhaps 8-10 attempts before I beat it. Tension time again. Had Laffman solved the 8x2? No, not yet... my lead held. The other games seemed hopeless, but I kept playing them anyway, long after I had lost interest them. Meanwhile, Laffman, and then mabb (you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can never fool mabb for the whole time) tied me at 30 games, but by then I was pretty confident that the last two games were unwinnable. FUN! Special thanks to Denny this week for all the great changes to the site and the tourneys in particular. I've included mabb and Laffman's humorous comments, wresisting (almost) the temptation to wrecord my own WRACage. Comments from mabb: Anyone remember the comedy show Hee Haw? If so, then sing along with me, now! All together - ! Gloom! Despair! And Agony on me! (If you remember any other verses, please feel free to add them!) That's me folks - I'm WRacked with gloom! I'm WRecked with despair, and WRung out with agony! I'm over-WRought with depression from the WRendings of that WRascally WRAC! What WReprisals do we have at our disposal? What WRetaliation can we possibly muster? None....we are completely and utterly WReduced! WReproached! WRebuked! OH WRAC! You lovable slimeball, you! Throw us a bone, will ya?! ;) I think that about sums it up for this WReek. Anything to add, Laffman? ~mabb~ Reply from Laffman: That was deWRightful, mabb! And WRonderfully, creWRatively WRitten. Let me give it a tWRy: I show up for a race, end up in a WRace, and all my effort goes to WRaste. I choke harder than a cat horking up a big hairball: "WRACKKKK! WRACKKKK!" How's that, mabb? Did I get it WRight, or get it WRong? |
| 2003-11-09 | vishna | [from mabb] Vishna'd again! That was bluerose's clever consolation comment to me in the chat room after the tourny! It was quite appropriate, too, because I've already been vishna'd in the Wimpy Wednesday tourny this past week, as well as been Crunch'd in a quickie tournament, been mickyiw'd more times than I can count, and been davidxz300'd (boy, that's a mouthful!) on Freaky Friday! No doubt I'll be WRAC'd, Burtle'd, qing'd, goatee'd and Laffman'd in the not too distant future as well! Although I was looking forward to having all kinds of fun in the new tourny formats, the most fun I had all week was tonight in the "traditional" master's. It was so comfortable and familiar, like slipping into an old pair of sneakers. But playing in the new tournys, I felt like a total freshman - jittery, nervous, staring dumbfounded at those 7x6's and 8x5's, not knowing where to start! It just felt WEIRD! But I do admit that I have a very fragile mental status (how could I NOT?! With 3 kids!?), so of course, I must give myself some measure of grace. Tonight there was a pretty tough 9x2 that almost sucked me under. With the 11-sum games (excepting 6x5's), I really get my dander up and often stubbornly (ie - stupidly!) REFUSE to move on until I vanquish them. But tonight, I did the wiser thing for some unknown reason, and quickly moved on after giving it only a couple of sorry tries. When I went back to it near the end, with only 3 games remaining, I saw it in a different light and it only took one try. I don't remember exactly what I saw, something new on the right side of the board, that started me on the right path. Then it was just a 6x5 to finish up, and of course that ugly 6x4. I only spent 10 minutes on that one, then I tried it as a 6x5 and still couldn't get anywhere with it. That's when I decided a 10x1 streak would be a LOT more interesting! Vishna - many kudos to you on your win! You're a hero in more ways than Netcell - you're a Mommy hero too, times FOUR! WOW! (hey, maybe *that's* the ticket ..... if I just have ONE more kid maybe I could get some of that good Vishna karma!......nah! Would somebody please slap me? I'm getting downright delirious! I think I'd rather be eternally in second place, or third - or tenth!) ;)
~mabb~ p.s. to WRAC - sorry about the demise of your streak tonight! You should have come into the chat room for some .comfort! But no doubt, *you'll* be back! |
| 2003-10-25 | WRAC | First, a confession. Although I make my best effort to show up here every Saturday night, lately I haven't had the same enthusiasm. After a while, playing a bunch of 8x4s and 7x5s as fast as you can gets a little tedious. Two weeks ago, it reached a nadir. 31 easy games and one that was clearly impossible. Nothing challenging or particularly interesting. It felt like a wasted evening. But I gave myself a little pep talk, and told myself to hang in there - a more challenging tournament had to arrive sooner or later. Tonight it did.
As is my custom, I glanced at the leader board early on to check out the competition. Generally, the more top players show up, the better I like it (since inspires me to play faster), but this week's lineup was scary! Was this the Weekly Masters or the All-Star Game? The winners of every tournament going back to August 9 (mickyiw, Laffman, mabb, vishna), plus a bunch of prior winners (goatee, Burtle, Crunch, mick126) and numerous other fine players were all gathered near the top of the board. Against such a field, I figured I had no chance unless I picked up the pace and played a little more recklessly. This can be a dangerous strategy, resulting in many a replay, but tonight I was either extra intuitive or extra lucky (probably the latter). I was definitely lucky with the choice of deals - there were quite a few which were tough but solvable. After 31 games and 62 minutes, I was in third place, just a few seconds behind the Dangerous mabb, and (shock of the week) only four minutes behind mickyiw (which made me wonder if she started late). All that remained was one as-yet-unsolved 6x5. As I played it, I was battling three emotions: annoyance that I might have missed second place by a handful of seconds; relief and wonder that I had somehow managed to get to third place ahead of Laffman, goatee, etc. (thereby potentially keeping my top-3-finish streak alive); and also a little anxiety that I might lose my third place finish if I couldn't knock off the final game. My first plan was to clear column 1, an approach that, in retrospect, was totally ill-conceived and should have been abandoned much earlier. I then went after column 5, which seemed more promising. It was fairly easy to build several long chains of cards - the problem was getting to one of the black aces before hopelessly burying both red twos. After a half-dozen attempts, I got it. Perhaps surprisingly, my first reaction was, damn, it really wasn't that difficult after all. Fears of a sixth (or worse) place finish started to invade my head. I hadn't been nervous while playing, but, now that it was over, I could feel my heart about to pop out of my chest. I positioned the results page so that neither the top leaders nor the last 6x5 were visible, and then clicked refresh. Slowly (just because I enjoy tormenting myself), I scrolled up the page... sixth... fifth... fourth... third... and then stared in shock when I saw I had won. After my heart calmed down, I watched the rest of the tourney Reporter-style, frequently refreshing to see what was going on. (Yeah, I should have saved the pages and written a report for the discussion page, but of course I didn't think of it until just this minute.) I knew the Dangerous mabb would get the final 6x5, but I was surprised that goatee was the only other person who did. It was also interesting to watch what was going on a little further down the board. The slow-but-steady folks like marcia7 and davidxz300 (note: this is a definite compliment in my book - I admire tenacity) were gradually moving up, while others, apparently stuck, slowly drifted down (my worst nightmare). In particular, I'd like to congratulate FerretZone, who has improved considerably, and also kweenbee for fine performances. In summary, I wish there were more tournaments like this. Both for the overall quality of players, and for the difficulty level of the games. If none are super difficult, we know that mickyiw is almost certain to win, and if she doesn't show up, then it will be goatee, Laffman, vishna or Burtle. But throw in a few toughies, and the winner could be any one of the above, plus a whole bunch of other people, not the least of whom is the Dangerous mabb. In addition to the other participants, I'd like to thank the Meat Puppets, whose ultra fine album, "Too High to Die," accompanied me throughout the tourney. Hope to see you all here next week! SECOND PLACE COMMENT: I really felt in sync, tonight. Lots of 7x5's, which were such fun! I felt like I was flying through the games. Trouble is, several others were "flying" as well. What a hyper-speed line-up! All the "micks" - iw/126/swit, Laffman, goatee, Burtle, Crunch, vishna, davidxz300, and Ferret. But at least the 10 sum games fell pretty easily, which I always take as a good sign. Even two of the 6x5's were pretty do-able (#3 and #22). But when it comes down to me, WRAC and a 6-column game, I count myself among the desperate rather than among the hopeful. There was NEVER a doubt that that last game WAS winnable, and never a doubt (in my mind, anyway) WHO would snatch it first. The only doubt was how deep and wide the winning time margin would end up being. WRAC, what can I say? Only the obvious - that you're the king! And you can quote me on that! ps - GO MARLINS! Up by two at the top of the eighth! ps to goatee - congrats to you, too, for hanging in there and conquering that nasty 6x5! ps to mickyiw - congrats on your new record for a 12 game win last week! That was stupendous! ps to roo - I'm always sick about missing a master's tournament, but never more so than after seeing your incredible write-up for last week's tourny! I'm green with envy! Red with rage! Blue with despair and despondency! I hope you'll do it again, sometime, oh - please - oh- please - oh - PLEEEEASE!?! (I learned that ingenious begging technique from my kids!) TTFN! ;) |
| 2003-09-20 | WRAC | It all started on Wednesday. That's the day that the gas company chose to do their monthly excavation at the entrance to my driveway. Monthly excavation? Yes, monthly, but don't ask me why. I called to inquire once, but after selecting 327 menu options and talking to 17 supervisors, the best I could get out of them was that there is some arcane municipal ordinance which requires there to be a gas emergency in front of my house on the third Wednesday of every month. To tell the truth, it used to freak me out, but now I just enter through the neighbor's driveway, drive over the lawn, park in my usual spot, pack my glassware in newspaper, and settle down to roll with the vibrations from the backhow and jackhammers. They usually finish up by 10:00, the traffic backup clears by 11:00, and then I settle down for a good night's sleep. Hell, it's only one evening a month. But not this week! By the time the final scoop of earth had been packed back down in the hole (by their portable earthquake generator), it was 2:55 in the morning, and the alarm was scheduled to go off at 5:15. I don't know about you, but that's not enough sleep for me. So, by the time Friday evening rolled around, I was a walking zombie. If I had been wise, I would have gone to bed at 7:30, and that would have been the end of it. Instead, something compelled me to play the 8:00 pm freecell tournament. (Freecell tournament? Yes, this is a story about freecell tournaments, in case you had forgotten.) Actually, "played" is a nice little euphenism for my performance in that tourney. In my bleary-eyed state, with the assistance of a few fortuitious random clicks, I somehow managed to get through 11 games, leaving only the 6x4. This I "played" numerous times before time expired without my having come anywhere near solving it. Now I don't mind losing (let's face it, there are at least a half dozen players on this site that I'm simply not going to beat in a series of easy to moderate games), but I do like to solve at least as many games as the winner. When I don't, it bugs me. I mean really bugs me. So much so that I spent all of Saturday clenching my fists in tension thinking back on that 6x4. By the time the start of the Masters Tourney rolled around, I was ready for revenge, and nothing was going to stop me! (Well, except maybe mickyiw, but luckily she wasn't around this week.) I put on Junta, the first Phish album, and started clicking furiously to the jams of "You Enjoy Myself" and "Divided Sky." After a while, I checked the stats and saw that five games remained unsolved. Hoping to avoid the trap of wasting time on unwinnable games early, I set about solving the remaining 27. These didn't prove too difficult, and I found myself in third place, behind Laffman (who had now won 28) and vishna. Not too shabby - I could never keep up with either of those two anyway, and I was in front of some excellent players such as Burtle and Crunch. Scrolling down, I saw that Laffman had solved the 8x2, so I went after that next. Perhaps surprisingly, this gave me no trouble at all, and I passed vishna, moving into second place. But now there were four games remaining, all unsolved. Following the theory that the games earlier in the list would have been attempted more, I tried the last one first, a 6x4. It looked promising, so even though I didn't get it at first, I had a feeling I would, and kept trying. Fifteen minutes and perhaps as many attempts later, I finally got it... and moved into sole possession of first place. I then tried the remaining games, none of which looked promising, but none of which looked completely unwinnable either. This is always an uncomfortable position to be in (who wants to lose after having been in first place?), and it became more so after mabb took over second place with her 29th win. If there's one player you don't want tied with you in a situation like that, it's mabb. Her kids may be screaming in her ears, pulling her hair, sticking needles in her eyes, placing shopping bags over her head, unplugging her monitor or slicing through the phone wire, but she still finds a way to solve every game that is solvable (and a few that aren't). Fortunately for me, the three games were not only unsolvable, but unmabbable, and I hung on for my first victory in three months. But really, it wasn't that difficult. You can do it too - you just need to get your local gas company to cooperate. Congrats also to Laffman and newcomer Roxanne on squeezing out the final game before time expired. Win or lose, that's always a good feeling.
SECOND PLACE COMMENT: Good job tonight, WRAC! And great comments too -
MORE than enough for both of us, no doubt, but I won't let THAT deter me! I am especially flattered by your clever new adjective - "unmabbable". I'll do my best to try to live up to that one! Personally, I never tire of hearing the "story behind the story", and in that respect, I'm relieved that at least ONE of us had something interesting to say! For the first time in recent memory, there just wasn't much happening around here to use as entertaining comment material. In fact, it felt SO (relatively) quiet that The Twilight Zone music theme kept running through my mind! Of course, as many dear readers know, the usual amount of clamor and chaos at my house insures that I need never resort to my imagination for comment embellishment (although I admit to making up the one about the incident with the fire extinguisher!). However, I will say one thing about the chaos around here - we DEFINITELY draw the line at hurting Mother! Hurt the house? - have at it! (but no matches!) Hurt each other? - try not to draw blood, at least. But hurt Mother? Not if you want to see your next birthday! NO WAY! |
| 2003-09-06 | mickyiw | Hi - davidxz300 here. It is a honor to write the "also-ran" comments this week. Special congrats to mickyiw for winning (again). I was thinking just writing "i didn't win" but I rarely have a chance to win. That wouldm't be any fun though. The main focus of my game is just to see what I can solve. My normal strategy is to do 13 sum, then 12 sum (note except 6x6's). When I have solve all these games, I usually play the rest by how many wins they have. On saturday before the tourney I was wondering if I really wanted to play. This was a busy saturday with our company picnic. As you can see I decided to play and early it showed that I was not playing best form. I took 3 times to solve both #2 8x4 and #17 10x2 but after that I settled down and was plodding along (meaning slowly getting what games I could). I look at the standings page after every win, but most of the time all I have time to see is what position I am in. At about the hour mark I noticed micky was getting close to running out of games (I thick she had 30 wins with WRAC a couple back) - and I was back with only 20 done. Most 2 hr tourney are just that for most of us. Micky was done just after 74 minutes and WRAC was done around 91. How nice it must be to be done that early. I want to say that it was good playing for micky, WRAC and mabb to finish with 32 wins. The 3 games that made this tough was #7 6x4 (I was lucky to get this one), #16 6x5 and #22 6x6. The 6x6 only ended with 4 wins. A special bow to kangaroo for solving the 6x6. Roo and I have always competed with each other and I have noticed it is getting harder to beat him. I have recently gotten a dsl connection and this allows me to play radio stations on the computer while I am playing. Sometimes it is a distraction when they won't play what i want, but it really seems to help the concentration when the songs are good. I hope I didn't ramble too much and I would like to invite everyone to the chat room after all the tourneys. A final thanks to micky and congrats to all the others who were holding her up in the top spot. |
| 2003-08-30 | mickyiw | Hi, this is kangaroo writing the "also-ran" comments for this weeks masters tourney. I hesitate to say "losers comments" because that implies that I was in the running and just missed out when in fact I finished 13th with only 27 games won in twice the time it took mickyiw to win all 32. The results show a clear gap between 8th placed marcia7 on 32 wins and 9th placed aechang with 29 wins and I think in many respects this tourney was a classic masters with micky well out in front followed by daylight, then WRAC and mabb taking the minor medals and Crunch and EMU leading the remainder of the field. I feel very honoured to be asked by micky to write these comments. She requested an articulate, sophisticated and intelligent set of comments but she will have to wait for the next person. micky also threatened not to edit them in any way, so I'll have to see if she carried that out! Being the thirteenth placegetter I thought it may be appropriate to write about walking under ladders, black cats and so on so if you are at all superstitious you better stop reading this right now. Seeing as during the week the planet Mars was at its closest to Earth since olblue was just a lad, I felt a little anxious going into this tournament, and with good reason. You see, in Australia the date was August 31st (or 13 backwards) and my time zone is 13 hours ahead of eastern US time. Furthermore I had planned a 13 km run afterwards, which I duly plodded in 77 minutes and I weighed in at exactly 13 stone (182 pounds). With all those coincidences out of the way lets talk about the actual tourney. I started with game #1 and worked my way through all the 12 and 13 sums until #31, having trouble only with #16 6x6 which I still haven't solved. The #6 9x2 took five attempts and #25 9x3 took three attempts. From then on I tackled the 8x3s and 6x5s and the others with mixed success, and in the end I couldn't solve #2 8x2, #14 6x5, #16 6x6, #24 6x5 and annoyingly, #20 8x3 which was won by 27 people. On the plus side I managed two games in under a minute each, #8 9x3 and #13 9x3, thanks I think to a new, speedier computer and a new electronic-eye mouse which is just fabulous! I didn't look at the progress of the tourney or game stats at all and was pleasantly surprised to see I made the top 15. I don't play music during tourneys as a rule because I only have a turntable, but shortly before the start I had played the "Crush" LP by Orchestral Manoevres In The Dark so I had those songs wafting through my head. I loved joeygray's comments last week (mabb was a hard act to follow the previous week) and I think this is a great idea of mickyiw's to give other players the opportunity to be recorded for posterity. Who's next, I wonder (another great album by the way, I must get it out again)? Thanks once again micky and congrats on your win - gee you are in great form at present! |
| 2003-08-23 | mickyiw | This is joeygray. Instead of winner's comments this week, mickyiw has graciously allowed (or graciously begged) me to substitute some 'losers' comments, which I will keep short. I am one of the 'decent' players who has very little hope of winning one of these things, but occasionally I do get to such a position as last night: winning all the same games as the speed players, still one or two games unwon, and enough time on the clock to hope that I could combine luck and decent skill into a win of one of those games before anybody else stumbles on the same combo. In this case, it was a rather good night for me, since I was only 35 minutes behind micky... the margin is generally much higher. On the down side, though, is I was also a good 20 minutes behind WRAC and 10 behind Crunch, both of whom I know to be at least as good and as fast as I am at the really tougher solvable games. So I knew the two were almost certainly unwinable, and indeed that's the way (apparently) it turned out. Looking at the 6x4 very briefly convinced me it was hideously hopeless, so I concentrated for the last 25 minutes on the 8x2. It was tantalizing... One of those just-give-me-a-ghost-extra-freecell-for-one-play ones, that are so close to being winnable but you just can't break through. So, 9th place for me again! A normal result. As for the rest of the tourney, I will note that, strangely, I blitzed through all the 7x3's with little problem this time, but my chief hangups were two different 9x2's that I had to play 4 times each to win. Odd! And I also blew game 4, the 8x4-11, on the first try and wasted many minutes (playing with 'streak' mentality, alas) before I shook myself into giving it up and trying again later - I did get it on the second try. So my 'tournament mode' can still use a bit of tuning... but I can't see how it will ever make up 35 minutes, which is what this coyote needs to catch roadrunners micky and vishna and goatee. Hope springs eternal, though! Ooops. I didn't quite keep this short, did I? As for music, I wasn't playing any... but I *was*singing, mostly cuts 5 through 8 of Vanessa Carlton's Be Not Nobody: "Rinse", "Sway", "Paradise", and "Prince". Don't worry, anybody can sing as good as Vanessa Carlton can! And Steely Dan's "Godwhacker" intruded some at the beginning of the session, that tune is pretty catchy. Ok, Now I'll quit |
| 2003-08-16 | mabb | Fortunately, my husband wanted to take me out for dinner on Saturday night. Unfortunately, Saturday night is the scheduled time for the Netcell Master's Tournament, which I am loathe to miss. Fortunately, he was involved in an all-day plumbing project which wasn't going well, and we would probably not be able to leave for dinner until after the tournament. Unfortunately, the project went well at times, and it looked like we would be able to leave for dinner *before* the tournament. Fortunately, the project took a bad turn and he was still working at tourny time, so I gleefully jumped in! Unfortunately, he was finished and ready to go around the 45-50 minute mark! Fortunately, he allowed me to stall him. Unfortunately, I had quite a few games left - all the 6x5's, the 6x4, a 9x2 (#25) and maybe even a 6x6 (#13) (Roo probably remembers better than me!). Fortunately, all of them had been won except for the 6x4. Unfortunately, Vishna was in first place (I think) and playing hard. Fortunately, two of my primary nemesis opponents were absent (according to Reporter's June list). Unfortunately, there were more than a few others in the line-up who have bloodied my Netcell nose in past tournies (yes - you vicious winners know who you are!). Fortunately, the left-over games fell fairly quickly. Unfortunately, it never felt like they were falling quickly enough to beat Vishna and the others. Fortunately, it WAS fast enough to put me in first place! Unfortunately, there was still the 6x4. Fortunately, it didn't look like a very winnable game. Unfortunately, I've learned NEVER to put anything past these rabid Netcell tourny-ists! Fortunately, after spending 10 minutes on that 6x4, I was more interested in dinner, so we left. Unfortunately, I would have to just wait and wonder about the final result. Fortunately, I was delighted to return home and see that the win had held! Unfortunately, it was by a very meager margin. Fortunately, a win is a win, even if by a second! Unfortunately, my statistics show it may be 4-6 long months before I win again in the Master's. Fortunately, I think folks like myself who are somewhat infrequent winners may actually enjoy their victories more (though of course I'd love to be on the more frequent side to see that perspective first-hand!). AND FORTUNATELY, it's fun to keep trying, even when you lose! AND FORTUNATELY, the Netcell community seems to be full of nice folks who compete seriously, but win and lose graciously. AND FORTUNATELY, we have Reporter keeping track of all the interesting stats! AND FORTUNATELY, we have Denny, who is genius enough to create and maintain this web-site! AND FORTUNATELY he has wonderful assistants like Jeffmo and Libby to help him! AND FORTUNATELY, I've run out things to say, so my treatise is hereby ended (but IF you're so inclined to see the end as an *unfortunate* turn of events, then fortunately, I will be glad to humbly accept your undying admiration!) :) |
| 2003-08-02 | mickyiw | Another great tourney. There were some real toughies in this one. Three of which appear to be unwinnable, (i'm sure someone will correct me if they are won). I hope goatee and mabb can make the next masters tourney. I did however see a new name, nobhill? Confess! Are you a talented new tourney player or an equally talented oldie with a new name? See you all Saturday night. |
| 2003-07-26 | mickyiw | Another great tourney. I always enjoy a tourney where all the games are winnable, even if there are a few stinkers, (namely my pet-hate 6x5's). As usual, I didn't have any great strategy. Just wanted to pick off as many of the easy games as quickly as possible. I also check the stats page regularly, as not to waste time playing un-won, and possibly un-winnable games. I don’t remember which games I played last, next time I’ll take note so people can compare which we all found the most difficult, if they so wish. I always dread being stuck on one or two games at the end, as I know WRAC and Vishna have far more patience and staying power than I do, and I usually end up rushing instead of thinking. Really boring, didn’t have any music, just a bit of TV background noise going on. Thanks to all for great competition, hope to see you all again same place, same time next week. |
| 2003-07-19 | goatee | Thanks, Reporter, for the congratulations, as well as various information about Saturday's tourney. I had no idea it was the fastest 30-game win ever, or that I had actually beaten my own record. Sometimes I feel like you're as much a historian as a statistician of netcell -- if it were not for your keeping watch over players' performance histories, so many facts will go unknown, unilluminated, uncommented on, in short, be nothing but rubble in the abysses of non-history and non-memory. It may not be an exaggeration to say that your bringing facets of netcell into the realm of consciousness is almost demigodish! And to WRAC: Thank you for the announcement -- and great job to you too for finishing in the top 3 on Saturday. I feel like this was a really lucky win for me, for two reasons. (1) Unlike my masters win of a couple of weeks ago, when all deals were winnable with no real stumpers, hence rendering it into a tourney of pure speed, this masters had a 6x4 that I somehow managed to win without much difficulty during the tourney itself but which I haven't been able to solve again since. I feel like, were my lucky stars or cosmic qi not aligned just right between 8-9pm that night, mickyiw, you, and greggory would surely have breezed by me to claim the top 3 positions. (2) I tried playing the two unsolvable games only a couple of times before I had to log off around 9pm for an appointment, and with a whole hour remaining, I thought for sure someone -- I particularly had you in mind, WRAC, who are so incredible at concentrating on, analyzing/dissecting, and ultimately decoding the tricky games -- would have solved one or both of them. I was pretty stunned, happily so of course, when I saw the next day that I had won the tourney. Anyways, this was great fun, as usual, and I'm thankful for all the great players and the competition that makes me sweat. Hope to meet you all again soon ... goatee |
| 2003-07-12 | greggory | A bit of tourney wisdom if you will; "The key is to win games fast, and to lose them even faster". Yep, I must admit I had some difficulty with some 8x4s tonight, especially the ones in the 3rd column, but my mouse was quick to hit that 'Give Up' button, and I didn't waste too much time before picking them up a little later in the game. I finally got down to the 6x5 and the 7x3, with about an hour left. For the 6x5, I deployed one of my old strategies by piling the clubs up to 8, before uncovering the ace of hearts or spades, the trick was freeing up the 5 of clubs and not the 5 of spades, that made a difference. As for the 7x3, I can't quite remember how I got that, but I defintely remember trying a completely different approach on maybe my eighth or ninth attempt and suddenly everything kinda opened up. Winning those tough deals sometimes just takes a little experimentation. The secret to that game will stay mine, (as well as mickyiw's and mik_kir's, who also won that game). I also would like to thank everyone for the great competition as always. If I'm not mistaken, I think everyone in the top 10 has won a masters at least once, making this one of the better collection of Netcellers we've ever had for a masters at one time. |
| 2003-07-05 | vishna | I must say this was a very lucky tournament for me. I have been struggling with the harder games as of late and have not felt that I was on my game. I powerhouse the easy games and then flop on the tougher ones for the most part it seems. But not this one! The whole tournament went very smoothly, except for one 9x4 that I played three times and then it came down to those last two. The 7x3 and 8x2. Knowing that no one had beaten those yet, I had to choose. So, I played the 8x2 for 5 or 6 times, switched to the 7x3 for about 5 or 6 times. Went back to the 8x2 and got it, though at this time I had figured that mickyiw had already beaten them. Boy, was I shocked, 31 all by myself! So my dedication to getting that last one was forthright. I played another 5 or 6 times and told myself to forget it after just one last time and I got it. There was no method to my madness, just sure luck. I found the answer and I don't even know how. Once again, my music of choice was the quiet of the house, only one slight distraction and my two-year-old napping peacefully away on the couch. |
| 2003-06-28 | greggory | You know I find there's less to say after a 25-minute victory than when I stole one in the last six minutes of a tourney like I did three weeks ago. This should be a relief to BetteD who earlier in the week, complained that Denny's message of the 'day' containing my previous comments were too long, causing her to have to scroll down all the time in order to play Netcell. (Luckily for BetteD, WRAC's comments have never been used for the message of the day) In honor of BetteD, I'll just end this by thanking Denny and all else responsible for putting together a truly great site. |
| 2003-06-21 | WRAC | Finally! I'm glad that drought is finally over. All spring without a victory. Maybe I just needed to wait for the first day of summer. We'll soon find out. Anyway, I knew I was playing well tonight because I attacked some 6x5s early, but didn't find myself way down in 23rd place, as is often the case. And I got through the 29 (relatively) easy games before mickyiw and Laffman (what's up with that?), only trailing the impossibly-fast vishna, whom I think was 6 or 7 minutes ahead of me. So then it was on to the three unsolved games. I tried the 6x5 first, because, although some are very difficult, it's my impression that most are winnable. I didn't get anywhere except to conclude it was a winnable 6x6, so I took a look at the 7x3. That seemed pretty hopeless, so I tried the 6x4. This definitely looked more promising, so I decided to work on it for a while. Took me perhaps 20 tries, but I realized (quickly) that building down from column 1 was a good idea, and then (finally) that column 6 had to be cleared before the first two, and then I was okay. It didn't seem all that tough, so I was extremely relieved to see I was the only person who had it. That was 88 minutes into the tourney. Fifteen minutes later, I was still the only one and was therefore feeling pretty confident. In order to beat me, someone would have to win both the 6x4 and one of the 7x3 and 6x5, and neither of them seemed winnable. Well... I was pretty sure about the 7x3, but I just wasn't convinced about the 6x5. So I kept playing it, and playing it, and playing it, until I never wanted to see that deal again. That old Billy Preston song ("Will It Go Round In Circles?") kept going through my head, because that was all I was doing, around and around, trying the same thing (clear column 5, then column 3) and always ending up in the same old stuck place. Usually, my strategy in such a case is to try something completely different, but I couldn't even find anything else to try! With 10 minutes to go, I took a minute break, and almost quit. But in the meantime, jbranick3 had solved the 6x4, and I decided it just wasn't safe to stop. So I kept going. Then I saw a little variation I hadn't seen earlier. Surely this would work! The thing was, it seemed so obvious once I saw it. Surely others had tried this path. But, with nothing else to do, I tried it anyway, got a little further... and got stuck. Now there were only about three minutes remaining. But I thought, what if... and I tried it a little differently, and then I saw it! Click, click, click! I'm not a fast clicker, but I was just praying I would beat the clock. (The clock, I might add, which has not been my friend this month - I believe there've been three tourneys this month when I solved the last game... only to find that time had expired.) But this time, I just made it, and those other bad memories quickly faded away. (Well, except for two weeks ago when I barely looked at the 8x2 which greggory finally got (nice job, greggory!) because I kept thinking I could get the 6x5.) Of course, I would have won the tourney anyway, but this is so much more satisfying, especially given the quality of tonight's field. For music, I tried something different - Volume 14 of Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough - New Wave Hits of the '80s, which is definitely the best disc in the set. Congrats to jbranick3, Crunch and davidxz300 (all of whom I think have improved considerably) on getting the 6x4 - thanks for making me sweat! How about if we all show up again next week (including goatee, mabb, Burtle and mick126)? |
| 2003-06-14 | goatee | Haven't played many masters tourneys lately, and originally I didn't think I would be able to make this one, but I managed to come through at the last minute. Good thing too, because this was another tourney right up my alley -- all winnables, mostly easy deals, and no real stumpers. I think I got stuck for a few minutes on the 8x2, and maybe there was a slightly tricky 6x6 ... but I can't exactly remember now. Sigh: I just don't have the freecell memory like some others, say WRAC for example, who always amazes me by being able to remember not only game variants but solutions, with moves in sequence too! Anyways, this tourney was a masters of speed, and I liked that. Of course, when I checked the standings after 30 games, I saw my usual nemeses, mickyiw and vishna, right on my tail. So I thanked my lucky stars that I got through the last two games without much head-banging. By the way, this was my first masters on an ethernet connection (rather than dial-up), and I must say, WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I started playing on various computers in a lab with ethernet about two weeks ago, and it has really spoiled me since. Of late, I've found myself daydreaming about my very own Perfect Freecell Computer With The Works. Ahh, maybe in a few years. Anyways, thanks to everyone for the fun and competition this weekend, and see you all (hopefully) at the next tourney! -goatee |
| 2003-06-07 | greggory | I've had lots of masters victories in the past, but this one was the most enjoyable of them all. Not only did I beat some really great players (mickyiw, mabb, mick126, vishna, WRAC, and others), I won with like 5 minutes left, and I won a game that no one else in the whole big world won. Like most players I got down to just the last two games, the 8x2 and the 6x5. I noticed that the 6x5 had two red 7's in the same column and two red jacks in another column, this seemed too troublesome so I focused on the 8x2. I employed a strategy where I piled the diamonds in the discard pile up to 7 before uncovering any other aces. That's what great about tourneys, it lets you experiment and do things you would never even think about doing when streakbuilding. This stategy did allow me to clear a column, but I still couldn't uncover one of the two black aces. With about ten minutes left I finally was able to uncover the ace of spades, after piling the diamonds up to 9, but I screwed it up and had to start the game over again with like 7 minutes left. On the very next attempt I once again got the ace of spades, then I cleared off two whole columns and then I got the two of spades, after that things just kinda fell into place and I won the game. Here's to another great tourney next week.
P.S. My musical selection tonight was Pavement's "Slanted and Enchated: Luxe & Reduxe". Essentially it's Pavement's classic 1991 album, with a few other songs throw in for good measure. It's probably an odd choice, but so far it's 1 for 1. Thank you Mr. Malkmus |
| 2003-05-31 | Laffman | It was great to finally join in the Saturday fun for a change, after many weeks of not having the opportunity to do so. Despite the absence of a few masters and mistresses, the talent still ran deep, so it was a satisfying win. It was also a surprising one, which maybe is to be expected after all, since any Master's victory surprises me anymore. My secret, as with my last surprise finish, was to be partially distracted and hope for a respectable finish rather than victory.For most of the tourney, I was also trying to keep track of my beloved Mighty Ducks in the first period of Game 3 in the Finals. I stumbled out of the gate, having to answer the phone a few seconds after the tourney started, and ending up having to replay the first game I tried. I also stumbled my way through the 7x5's, none of which were particularly difficult, but many of which somehow stumped me through 4-5 attempts - I finally left a few for later and had much better luck on the second round of attempts.I didn't keep a close eye on the leaderboard most of the time, but at one point I did see a 6x5 as the only unsolved game yet, so I left it for last. I know for sure I wasn't the first to crack it, but it was the final game I played and I got very lucky, managing to win it on my first attempt. I fully expected to see some other name atop the leaderboard when I refreshed it after that 6x5, but it held up. Thanks to everyone for another great tourney, and Go Ducks!" |
| 2003-05-24 | mickyiw | haven't been around for too many tourneys of late, but I'm certainly glad I was here for this one. What a tourney! So many tough games and down right stumpers. And some great competitors too. I usually give up after a while of playing the same games over and over without finding a solution. But two factors kept me playing, firstly, I just couldn't believe there were so many unwinnable games. And secondly, that WRAC was right behind me, and I know all too well that his concentration level for such games is much higher than mine. .bow WRAC. So I kept plodding on, trying to find a game that appeared to be vaguely winnable. I managed the 6x5 after a while and then just blindly played the other games at random, hoping to hit on something I'd missed. I surprised myself when just before the final whistle the 6x4 also proved winnable . I'd be interested in knowing if any of you die-hard players managed to win any of the other games after the tourney had finished? Great competition and I look forward to meeting you all in another tourney. .bow .smile |
| 2003-05-17 | vishna | This was a very interesting tournament for me. After I realized it was 5:00 and I was missing the beginning, I thought that there was definitely no way for me to win at that point, given all of the heavy competition as of late. I was thinking I would place somewhere around the 10th position. Well, much to my surprise that wasn't the case. And when I realized that all of the games were winnable, I kicked myself for not being on time. It was quite a relief to actually win the 32 games this time, whereas the last two tournaments I won I was holding my breath for an hour waiting for the last game. Only 31 games had been won. Thank you for a wonderful time and if you get a chance you can look at the discussion page with a great run-down of the tournament narrated by goatee. |
| 2003-05-10 | goatee | It seems like ages since I've played a masters tourney, and several times that since I've won one. But what great fun! Thanks to all for the competition/motivation. To paraphrase Crunch from the discussion board: to have a great win, you need to have great opponents. And I certainly had my share tonight of speedsters and tricksters (ie. adept solvers of tricky games, usually not me): vishna, mick126, greggory, mabb, WRAC, Crunch, qq, aechang, zzww, davidxz300, mik_kir, Beowulf, et al. As for strategy, I did something different tonight than what I usually do for the 12-game tourneys. Instead of going for the easy deals first, I played straight down the columns in order, skipping only the sub-12-sums. That slowed me down a bit, but to good effect, apparently, because I also played more carefully, more steadily. Not much head-banging on the monitor either. The 8x2-10 was a bit of a stumper but not cripplingly so, and the 6x4-10 felt unwinnable enough for me to quit, without much anxiety, after a few tries. Generally I'm not much of a tough-rider, that is to say, I abandon seemingly unsolvable games quite easily -- often *too* easily, because many a time has been the case that more skillful and persistent players slip ahead of me by working away at a tough deal. This has urged patience and perseverence, and now I try to give more goes at toughies than I used to. As for my machine's performance tonight (you knew it was coming!), only a disconnect or two, but no major breakdowns to complain of. As a final note, those interested may wish to check out Reporter's post on the discussion forum, where he (she?) has done an amazingly meticulous "progress report" of tonight's tourney, with taps on who led whom at what time. With such splendid contributions as his (hers?), I feel my experience at this site getting more enriched all the time. Until next time then, and the best to everyone ... goatee (by the way, that's a she) |
| 2003-05-03 | vishna | Wow! What a tournament! For a while there I didn't think I had a chance. I had started the game out with a 10x3, and lost! As well as one of the 9x3s. I even replayed the 9x3 and lost again. I thought I was done for. I started in on the 8x4s and was quite surprised at how smoothly they all played. Then there was that 8x2. I wanted to tackle it badly, to assure a win, but I took one look at it and realized that I wasn't going to be able to do that in one day or even one year. I played it a few times and gave in to the powers that be. The music of choice tonight was the pure quiet of a toddler taking a nap, while the older children raptly watched a movie and my husband was out book shopping. Thanks for the fun game tonight. vishna |
| 2003-04-26 | vishna | have to say this was a great tournament for me to win, because Monday is My Birthday :-) It's my week mabb. ;-) I was playing relatively well tonight, except for the 7x5s. I must have played each one of those 3 times each. I have been getting stuck on those for the past week or so. There weren't very many gimme games tonight, only 1-9x4 and 1-10x3. I like to see at least 4 or 5 of those. Anyway, I just headed into the rest of the 9x3s and 9x2s and hit full throttle. I have been taking a different approach to the harder games lately and it has paid off. I started to think things through a little bit more as opposed to just jumping in with mindless clicking. I must say that when I got down to the last three games that had not been won - 6x5, 6x4 and 8x2, I was sighing pretty heavily. That is usually the point at which WRAC or someone comes in and knocks me off. But after playing the 6x4 about 10 times I knew it could be beat as well as the 6x5. So after accomplishing that, I pressed on to the 8x2. I felt pretty sure about it being too hard to finish but I played it 3,000 times just in case. Especially when I saw that WRAC had reached 30 games and then 31. Tonight the music was the sound of the 2-year-old watching some show on one of the kid's channels (at least I hope it was a kid's show) with my 9-year-old son, followed by his incessant questions about when I am going to be off the computer so he can play on it. Thanks for a fun tourney tonight. |
| 2003-04-05 | EMU | To be really honest I just happened to get lucky and win all 29 games on the first try. I then tried the last 3 games 2 or 3 times and went back to working on my streak (which by the way is very hard to do after playing so fast and not worrying about losing a game). I really figured that someone would win one of the other games in the last hour. |
| 2003-03-29 | Laffman | Wow! My first win in a long time, and it feels great, especially against stiff competition like vishna, WRAC, scottylal, mick126, davidxz300, and others. My secret, other than pure luck of course, was to totally let go of my competitiveness and just play. Of course it was nice to finish and find out I was the first one there, but I abandoned my usual habit of looking at the leaderboard toward the end, and picking games based on that. The first time I looked at the leaderboard was when I finished the 32nd game, and I was extremely surprised to find my name at the top. I was playing while talking on the phone for the first dozen games or so, and figured that alone would blow any chance I had, since I had to replay a couple of 9x3's and 8x4's in the early going. The 6-variants, my frequent nemeses, only occurred twice in the grid, and the general spread seemed a bit easier than usual. All but the final 6x4 struck me as probably solvable even after first attempts, and none took more than five tries to beat. The 6x4 was the last and hardest one I played, but even on that one, I think I got it in under five tries. All in all, a very surprising outcome to me, but I'll take it. :) Peace. |
| 2003-03-15 | jbranick3 | My second win I think. Have to ask reporter about my stats. I didn't think I was gonna do that well becasue I got home late from work, put some buffalo wings in the oven, and started playing a few of the games from the past tourney just to warm up a bit. Wings were done about 5 mins before the tourney began so I was eating with my left hand and trying to play with my right. I change my style a bit when playing tourney as opposed to just playing other times. I tend to send more cards up as opposed to just letting the cards fly up by themselves normaly. With one hand it slowed me down. Not that I am a speed demon to begin with. Fell behind, was in fifthish place with 4 or so games unsolved. An 8x2, 7x3 and 2 6x5's. Took a crack at the 6x5's and they looked solvable. Lo and behold, they were and I was the fist to get them. Like WRAC, I do better with the tougher games. They seem fall into place easier for me, maybe it has something to do with me usually not sending the cards up. I don't know. Musical choice was the second Ramones anthology disc, which started skipping about 3/4's in. Then 2 punk compilation albulms I got from the warped tour 2 yeas ago. Puck strikes back or something along those lines. And of course, food wise, Wings o Fire, with ranch dressing. Going for the quad with the 4, 2 hour tourneys this weekend. A bit over an hour to go for the fourth but 3 down. |
| 2003-03-08 | WRAC | My speed game still needs some work (sloppiness forced me to play one of the 10x3s twice), but I somehow found myself in first place, about 6 seconds ahead of Laffman, after 29 games. The remaining three (two 6x5s and an 8x2) were still unsolved. A quick glance at each of them led me to believe that 6x5 20210-10 was difficult but probably solvable, 6x5 31435-11 was more difficult but still maybe solvable, and 8x2 16829-9 was unlikely. So I attacked them in that order, and fortunately, my first impressions were correct. I had some scary moments with the 8x2 though; it was actually closer to being solvable than I first thought. For example, the unlikely strategy of first moving the two queens at the bottom of column 1 to the two free cells almost led to victory. Finally however, with about 15 minutes left, I convinced myself it wasn't worth working on further and went on to other things. Tonight's CD was Ben Folds Five "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner," in keeping with the new slogan "WRAC - All Ben Folds, All the Time" (at least at tournament time). On the subject of music, have you heard that Bruce Springsteen is now opening all his concerts with his cover of the immortal Edwin Starr song? "War! What is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING! Say it again." Please pray for peace. |
| 2003-03-01 | WRAC | You know, I think mabb has a point. Loser's Comments would probably be a lot more interesting to read than Winner's Comments. We'd get to hear all the excuses, from "If I hadn't mistaken the two of clubs for the two of spades, I wouldn't have used up my last free cell, and I would have won that 7x4 on my first attempt" to "After I lost my Internet connection when the house started to burn down (I knew I shouldn't have let the kids play with the blowtorch tonight), my annoying neighbor made me wait at least five minutes to use his machine while he finished checking the sports scores." Oh well, until Denny implements that feature, you'll just have to put up with more Ramblings From WRAC this week. Actually, tonight's win was quite the surprise for me. Without a really tough deal, the chances of my passing the speedsters goatee and vishna was slight. Also, my musical selection was a poor one. Peter Gabriel's "Sixteen Golden Greats" is a good disc, but a bit too pondering for freecell. Anyway, I started slowly as usual, hanging around fifth to seventh place, unable to keep up with the leaders. But I gradually closed the gap, moving up to second behind goatee with each of us having two deals left. Mine were an unsolved 6x5 and a 6x4 solved by only two. I went after the 6x4, and had no problems, getting on my first attempt fairly quickly. That was lucky! But when I checked the board again, goatee had beaten me to 31, and there was only the unsolved 6x5 remaining. My first attempt yielded nothing, but my second revealed a breakthrough. Alas, in my haste, I played too quickly and blew it. Now I was worried - the game didn't seem that difficult - had goatee already won? Not wishing to know for the moment, I tried it again... and this time solved it. And hardly a minute too soon as goatee quickly won it also. My guess is there was a freeze or a crash on goatee's machine... but we'll just have to wait for Loser's Comments to find out, won't we? Thanks to Reporter for stimulating discussion and interest in the Master Tourneys! LOSER'S COMMENT (goatee): First off, congrats to WRAC for a(nother) much deserved win. Actually, the tourney went surprisingly smoothly for me this week, with no crashes or disconnects and only a few brief freezes (which is like Freecell heaven on my machine -- I wonder why?). So no, unfortunately, I can't resort to system blowups as an excuse for losing *this* time! And hats off, as usual, to WRAC for solving that tough 6x5 (tough by my standards, at least!) in a snap. Those tricky ones always get me, and I often lose the lead I build up as I repeatedly bang my head against the monitor in hopes of solving them *that* way. (Maybe the banging accounts for some system crashes? Hmmm ...) An aside: I wonder if mabb had to entirely skip this week's tourney because she *was* in fact busy with the fire extinguisher as her kids played with the blowtorch? |
| 2003-02-22 | WRAC | As I drove home for tonight's tournament, I thought to myself, "Gee, I'd really like to win tonight." Not that I don't always want to win, but I was feeling particularly alert after 9.5 hours sleep (definitely the key to success for me), and I just felt confident. Then about 45 minutes into the tournament, when I saw the big lead that Laffman and mickyiw had run up, I thought to myself, "Okay, who the hell was I to think I could keep up with those two?" The problem was an 8x3 (27556-9) which was driving me crazy. While I was battling it, the aforementioned speedsters reached 30, with two games remaining unsolved. My chances looked bleak, and I reluctantly began to set my sights on third place. When I finally solved the 8x3, I checked the standings only to find that my good buddy and "diabolical fiend" mabb had reached 30 just in front of me. Sigh. Looking below, I saw something which gave me renewed hope. Two people (who were they?) had solved the 8x2. Excellent! There's nothing I like better than a tough but solvable game. Maybe I could get it before one or two of the other three. After perhaps five or six attempts and not too much time, I had it won. (See my solution on the discussion board if interested.) Big surprise! Nervously, I checked the stats... and I was now leading! This looked very promising, especially if the other game, a 6x6, were unwinnable. But here's where having a lot of players in the tournament changes the strategy and makes it more interesting. Someone (wscc, I later discovered) had won it. Now I was really nervous. It's one thing to lose from the start, entirely another to blow a lead. On the other hand, I was feeling renewed confidence, so I went to it... and slowly watched that confidence erode. Nothing was working. Time to use the Try Anything Once method. Namely, if the avenues that look promising aren't opening up, try one that looks hopeless. You never know... At last, I solved it. Probably too late, I figured. Extending the drama (why do I torture myself this way?), I checked the games stats first. Oh no - not only had 6 people now solved the 8x2, but someone else (besides wscc and I) had won the 6x6. Slowly, I scrolled up the screen. I knew I could be no worst than third, but I didn't expect any better. Imagine my surprise when I was the only one to 32 so far. Double that when, 17 minutes later, the tourney ended with no one else reaching 32. I'll say it again - a few really tough games make for a much more interesting tournament. And I'm not just saying that because it allows players like mabb and myself to steal the occasional win from the true speedsters like Laffman and mickyiw. (Although I'm not complaining about that either.) These games just add an element of strategy to the tourneys that wasn't there before. Nice job to everyone I've mentioned, as well as mick126 (almost the winner), Msgr.Burtle (another speedster), marcia7 (who's really improved lately - go marcia!), wscc (the first person to win the evil 6x6, despite finishing 20th) and all the other competitors. Tonight's musical selection was the first Ben Folds Five disc (is Ben Folds the greatest or what?) and then silence while I allowed the residue of the album to echo through my head. "Boxing's been good to me..." Or should I say, "Freecell's been good to me..." |
| 2003-02-15 | mabb | broke one of my cardinal rules for tonight's tourny - I NEVER check the rankings until I'm down to the 10-sums and 6x5's. But tonight I had a weak moment after game number nine, and sure enough I got spooked by seeing mickyiw at the top of the list, with myself right behind her. The jitters set in, and I started fumbling around, having to re-start 8x4's and 9x2's. As Laffman has pointed out, these tournys are getting tougher to win, with exceedingly stiff competition, and so I consider re-starting ANY 12 sums and most 11 sums to be a certain death-knell. But soon I saw that I had finished half the board in under 30 minutes, so I changed my thinking. I decided to go for finishing in under one hour, which for me would be a first-time event. With only the 7x3 and the 6x4 remaining, I was stunned to find I had slipped into first, ahead of mickyiw, but not by much! And even more weird - the 7x3 had been won by TWO people already! How could that person NOT be in first place? Perhaps it was WRAC, that diabolical fiend who sandbags the rankings by saving the 13-sums for last! No doubt he was at that moment sinking those " easy pants" games, travelling at warp speed into first place! There was no help for it, except to tackle the 7x3, trying not to think it was mine to lose, but still focusing on my "personal best" time. Although I believe my time did turn out to be a personal record, I just couldn't quite squeak it out before the 60-minute mark. So I still have that brass ring to reach for next week! And what a photo-finish for 2nd-5th places! Quite exciting! As for tonight's background "noise" - well, our resident Triple Commotion Choir was rather "pianissimo". Our five-year olds' penchant for flushing Fisher-Price people seems to FINALLY be in remission! Or maybe we've just run out of little people to flush (no doubt there's a psychiatrist's couch somewhere in his future over this one - but it's a mother's job to worry - right?). One member of the "choir" was away on a sleepover, so Dad and the boys were settled in with a classic war film - "The Flying Tigers" with John Wayne. Tonight, in addition to my perpetual thanks to Denny and his faithful assistants, I'd especially like to thank the competitors in the lower half of the rankings, just because you guys never get mentioned! TTFN! |
| 2003-02-08 | WRAC | Ever wonder why some days you have it and some days you don't? Sorry, no answers here; I'm just glad the last three weeks are over. From losing to three players by less than a minute each two weeks ago, to solving last week's 28th game approximately 60 seconds after the tournament ended, it was a frustrating time. So when mickyiw returned for tonight's battle, accompanied by such tough competition as Laffman and mabb, I really didn't expect my losing streak to end. As usual though, it was a tough 6-column game that saved my life. Somehow, I had a hunch it was winnable, although it must have taken me 20-25 attempts. And just in time too. It's always a pleasant surprise to squeak by micky. Musically, it was something old and something new. First, the Offspring's "Ixnay on the Hombre," one of the all-time great freecell albums, followed by Mark Knopfler's "The Ragpicker's Dream," not a bad album, but a minor disappointment after the amazing "Sailing To Philadelphia." I can hardly wait for next week! |
| 2003-01-18 | mabb | Wow! It's WONDERFUL to finally wrestle the winner's pen away from WRAC! I was beginning to consider changing my handle to WRABB in hopes of getting some of that good karma (like I really believe in that!). Tonight, I immediately figured it would be his night again, after seeing so many six-column games on the tourny board! TWELVE, to be exact. AAARGH! I feel quite handicapped with those games, since they require more of a slow, thoughtful approach, which I'm NOT in the mood for during a tourny. I was nearly done in by that 6x5 (game #28), and frankly I haven't been able to re-win it and I don't know how I pulled that one off. But the last two 6X4's were interesting. They both had a Q/clubs and 8/hearts in similar positions and I built up initially on both of those cards in both games. In 29934-7, I cleared column one first, then sent home several hearts. Then I cleared column two, sent home some more hearts and built up on the K/clubs. Then I went after the 3/spades, and by building up on spades and hearts was able to win. The clubs were the last to go. But in the final 6X4 (20369-8), I was getting nowhere tyring to free the aces in column 3 too early. I used the familiar Qclubs and 8hearts to build on, clearing column six, and sending home several clubs. I put the Kspades into column 6 and piled it all the way down to the 2Hearts, while clearing columns 1 and 2, and starting to send home diamonds. But I'm particularly pleased that I can re-win those games and actually describe what I did, because usually I can't! Tonight, for "tunes" I had the live-and-in-concert Triple Commotion Choir (ages 11, 9 and 5), in complete disharmony, of course, with some rather disturbing refrains: "Mom, my Latin project is due Monday!" / "Mom, where are the matches? Why naw-awt? It's JUST a little experiment! Puh-leeease?! You're SO mean!" / "Mo-om!! Nicholas is trying to flush toys again! NO! - I don't know where Daddy is!" Daddy eventually came back from his Home Depot trip, put out all the fires, and settled them in with a Don Knotts movie (Shakiest Gun in the West). It's amazing what kids will laugh at! By the way . . . I might have set a record in this tourny - for the LONGEST WINNING TIME!?! A twisted form of acclaim, perhaps, but I guess better than no acclaim at all! Until next time . . . . :) |
| 2003-01-11 | WRAC | I was twice lucky this week. First because my cable was sliced on Thursday, but was repaired just in time for tonight's tourney, and second because I somehow managed to beat the speedy Laffman with a mix of games the type of which generally leaves me drowning in his wake. Not to mention edging out the always dangerous mabb and the other m- players. Other than that, there really isn't much to say as I didn't find any of the games to be of particular interest. Except perhaps, for the apparently unsolvable 7x3 which looked utterly hopeless. I have to admit, after giving up early last week (and getting away with it), I vowed to be more patient in the future, but there was no way I was going to mess around with that particular deal for an hour. I quit after about 30 minutes. And oh yeah, that 10x3. I saved it for last as a confidence buffer... and then almost blew it by playing too fast. Somehow I managed to recover and win it just in time. This week's CD was the new Pearl Jam - Riot Act. It was my first listen, and although I wasn't paying close attention, it wasn't bad. Not recommended for playing freecell to however. I considered putting on another disc when it ended, but the standings were too close to mess around with stuff like that. And a good thing I didn't - my eight-second margin of victory certainly wouldn't have supported a disc swap. |
| 2003-01-04 | WRAC | So you get lucky and win a few master's tournaments and you think, "Hey, I'm a pretty good freecell player," and then someone points out that you could have won an 8x2 which eluded your best efforts, and you suddenly realize that perhaps you aren't the cat's pajamas after all. So, while the cat looks around for something else to sleep in, I'd like to thank wssc and kangaroo for pointing out that the game was winnable on the message board and congratulate them on their successes. After reading their postings, I went back and played the 8x2 again, and this time got it on perhaps the fourth try, which I think just proves that there is absolutely no substitute for having the confidence that something can be done before setting out to do it. Also, kangaroo raises a good point when he mentions that any one of a bunch of people could have won that tourney. That's what I like about the hard games. They're great equalizers. Instead of a bunch of people futily chasing mickyiw (what happened to her anyway?), many more of us have a chance if we can just be lucky enough to find the solution to a really tough game before anyone else does. Much more exciting! As for music, it was the new Mark Knopfler and Aimee Mann (again) this week. Excellent albums. Best of luck to all in 2003! |
| 2002-12-28 | WRAC | Oh those nasty 6x4s - I sure do love 'em! (If I can solve 'em, that is.) This was one of the more nerve-wracking tournaments of recent memory. I was first to 29 games (with the venerable Laffman right on my heels) and none of the three remaining games solved. That's always uncomfortable - there's the continual fear that someone will pass you while you sweat away at an impossible game. So I tried the 6x5 first, and got it on the second try. This was clearly luck, but hey, you take what you can get. With two games remaining, the 7x3 looked much more likely to be winnable than the 6x4, so I battled that for a while. Longer than I should have, really, as the field began to close in, and the august JC soon tied me at 31 games. That left the 6x4 (14253-10) which just didn't seem winnable. I was able to clear column 3 and then column 2 without too much difficulty, but then I kept needing one more cell. ("One more cell, give me just one more cell," I sang in my best Phil Collins imitation.) Finally, it sunk into my sometimes rather slow brain that I simply wasn't going anywhere further until I got the ten of diamonds into play. After that, it was much easier, but by then a good 20 minutes had passed. With all the talent in tonight's field, I figured someone must have passed me. But miraculously no, and that's the way it ended. I'd like to thank Ben Folds ("Rockin' the Suburbs") and Aimee Mann ("Lost In Space") for the musical accompaniment, as well as Libby for recommending the latter disc. Happy New Year to all! |
| 2002-12-21 | vishna | After playing that 7 x 3 for about 35 minutes, I finally looked up at my 20-month-old to realize that she had taken all of her clothes off, including her diaper. At that point, I decided to give up, check the floor, and rediaper the baby. :-) I certainly gave that game my best. It was a lot of fun. Happy Holidays everyone. Vishna |
| 2002-12-14 | WRAC | After solving 29 games, I was in second place (behind EMU) with three remaining deals, all unwon. I tackled the 6x5 first, but got nowhere, so I went on to the 6x4 which I quickly surmised as being pretty much hopeless. That left the 8x2, which seemed winnable, although it took me a long time to finally get it. By the time I did, two others had solved it, and someone had figured out the 6x5. I figured this meant I was probably in around 4th place, but much to my surprise, I was still leading. With renewed confidence, I went after the 6x5 again, this time trying a completely different route. Suddenly, the game was much easier, and I got it on the next attempt. And a lucky thing I did too, as Crunch and mick126 were right on my heels. For music, I started by digging something out of the WRAC vault (Steppenwolf's Greatest Hits) and then went back to my all-time favorite freecell album - "Pay Attention" from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Happy Holidays to all! |
| 2002-12-07 | WRAC | Okay, who won that 6x4? (12707-10) WRAC wants to know. I got through 30 games in first place, and was left with two 6x4s, both unsolved. Neither looked like a likely winner, but the level 10 game seemed to offer marginally more hope, so that was the one I concentrated on. I never did get it though, and when I saw someone finally did, I figured I'd blown my win. But, surprise! Whoever solved it must have got stuck elsewhere, giving me a lucky and perhaps undeserved win. But hey, a win is a win, so I'll take it. I will however, give myself considerably more credit for my selection of musical accompaniment. First, it was disc 1 of "Bowie, The Singles 1969 - 1993", followed by They Might Be Giants' "Flood" - probably my best choices to date. Thanks to all, and my condolences to Beowulf on a recent string of second place finishes. Believe me, I know what it's like. Been there. But I suspect a win will be coming soon. Good luck! |
| 2002-11-23 | vishna | Thank you! I am feeling sooooo good about winning tonight. I love playing with all of you. |
| 2002-11-09 | greggory | There really isn't much to comment on this week, it was essentially a race to 31, since the 6x4 game was impossible. Whenever you see two cards of the same rank and color at the top of a column, that's a taletell sign a game's impossible or at least very hard to win. The 6x4 had two columns like that, the red fives, and the black tens. I realize that it may be long over due, but I would like to thank Denny and all else responsible for putting together a great site like this. I'll see you all next Saturday. Libby is still having problems sending email to freecell.com addresses. dot scream. If you still have my email addy, greggory, just send them right on over. |
| 2002-11-02 | WRAC | Ever try to quit freecell? I made it for just about a month (Sep of '02), but it didn't last, so here I am, back again. Can't say I'm disappointed - I missed the Saturday evening battles. This week, I started in my usual fog - after one particularly pathetic series of attempts at a 7x5 (a tougher than expected game, I later discovered), I found myself in 21st place. Slowly I warmed up, and eventually, I rose to second place behind M.Burtle with 27 games each. That appeared to be as high as I would get however - the nasty 8x3 (24179-10) took me 25 minutes or so, by which time I had fallen back to fifth. And with four games remaining which nobody had managed to solve, I wasn't particularly hopeful of finishing any higher. But one never knows, so I decided to work on the 6x4. It was the only one of the four that didn't look completely hopeless. And, surprisingly, once I got the nerve to put both black jacks in the freecells almost immediately, it wasn't too tough. Or more likely, I was lucky enough to stumble upon the correct path relatively quickly. I do like the 6x4s though - it's become pretty much the only variant I play anymore (other than tournaments). Musically, I started out with the latest Ben Folds, "Rockin' the Suburbs" (another disc that everyone should own), and then... well, I got so wrapped up in the tourney that I never got around to putting in another disc. I guess sometimes silence works just as well as some good tunes. Thanks to Denny for Player Appreciation Week and to M.Burtle, Crunch, mabb, bigeds, marcia7, greggory, etc. for the competition. See you all next week! |
| 2002-10-26 | goatee | Hi everyone! Wow, a win: maybe this is what my cookie fortune predicted when it said "The wheel of good fortune is finally turning in your direction." Tonight's tourney was so close toward the last two games, however, that I feel I should share the win with about five other people. And one never tires of echoing the general sentiment that this is a great site with many excellent players, demonstrating everyday the theorem that a whole *does* exceed the mere summation of its parts. Meet you all again at the next game! |
| 2002-10-12 | M.Burtle | I'm a regular visitor to your great site, and feel lucky to have won this week. It's fun to recognize the familiar names of my fellow competitors and to see new names on the boards. I wish all of you the best in coming tournaments. |
| 2002-09-14 | goatee | Holy cow! I've never won a masters tournament before, always so exasperated as I am with the difficult games and prone to giving up. But I enjoy just playing the game with all the great players. Great site! |
| 2002-08-31 | mickyiw | Another win for us girls, just to dispell the myth that men dominate freecell. Well, I haven't been able to play many masters' tourneys lately and it's great to be back :) For anyone interested, i played using the new version. It takes a while to get used to, but the game loading speed makes it well worthwhile (thanks Denny). Of course, the fact there was only one 6x5 game helped. It's good to see a lot of new names in the tourney, i look forward to meeting you all again, same time, same place, next week. A little warning from libby: be afraid, be very afraid... |
| 2002-08-10 | EMU | just got this email and apologize for my delay in responding. I'm not interested in putting comments on the actual tourny but was excited to win. I find the game quite addicting and really enjoy playing the tournaments. I didn't realize that freecell seems to be dominated by men. I hope to keep winning tournaments and as long as mickyiw doesn't play I have a chance! |
| 2002-08-03 | Laffman | "First, I'd like to thank mickyiw for being somewhere else come tourney time, because that surely helped my chances. Aside from that, it was a combination of luck, patience, and discovering that it *is* in fact possible to play the tourney with the new windows version of netcell. It took me a while to find that option on the drop-down list with the variants, so I'd been poking along on the old version for tourneys. I'd also like to thank the Game Stats list for helping me decide which games to keep trying when I was stumped toward the end, because without those, I may have stayed stuck forever on those 8x2's that no one got." |
| 2002-07-20 | greggory | Well, once again I benefit from a tourney without mickyiw, had she bothered to play she would have put us all to shame. About 30 or 40 minutes in I actually had trouble with four of the 7x5's, I actually chose to win some of the harder games before doing those 7x5's. Eventually I was left with a 6x4, 8x3, and a 7x4. I'd say it took me maybe 4 or 5 tries each to get the 6x4 and then the 8x3. It was then maybe another 6 or 7 tries to get the 7x4. When I finally solved those last three games, they seem kinda easy, which to me is a bad thing, beacause that means they're winable, and usually another great player probably solved them first. To me if you're spending 10, 15, 20 minutes to solve a game, it's better to find out that it's impossible because then you know no one else would have been able to solve it either. So I was kinda surprised that I won tonight. My musical selection tonight was 'dead silence', actually it wasn't excatly dead, I could hear some crickets through my window, and I could sorta hear the monotone humming of my fridge. |
| 2002-07-13 | mabb | What! No 6x5's??!! Oh, JOY! Tonight's music should have been "Fun, Fun, Fun" by the Beach Boys, or Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" (pick your genre). Instead, I mostly heard the humming of the washer and dryer, as I do laundry and try to get the kids packed up for camp this week (do they really mean "label EVERYTHING"?!?!). It was a good night to finish early. I suspect this is the kind of gameboard that a certain lady would have slammed through in about 48-50 minutes, but I won't cry too loud and long over her absence. You just learn to take your good fortune when it comes; there'll no doubt be plenty of opportunities to eat humble pie later on. There really wasn't a lot of angst in this line-up tonight. Aside from the 10-sum games, there were only 4 games that I had to re-do (both 7x4's , 9x2 #18, and 9x3 #14), but 3 of them went down on the second try, the last one took me 3 tries (the 9x3!). But when I got to the 10-sums, 2 out of 3 of them also went down on the first try, though I did play very carefully and each game took several minutes. The 6x4 took me two tries - the second time I had to refrain from sending a red three home, so I could have a spot for a black two. Since I was never in first place (at least none of the times I checked), that took a bit of the mental pressure off. Plus, others broke the ground for me on the 10-sum games (thank you very much!), so I never faced any "unsolved" games. (But I really appreciated WRAC's comments on un-won games a few weeks back - that 3rd possibility can make all the difference when you apply that perspective!). My only struggle tonight was that the games weren't loading smoothly. The loads kept "sticking", until I found that waving the cursor back and forth across the columns would keep the cards popping up quickly. I felt like a fairy godmother waving her magic wand all night! I don't know what's up with that recent glitch,probably I need to empty my cache, but otherwise I'm enjoying the quick new Windows version. One small inconvenience with Windows, though, is that dinner definitely needs to be finished BEFORE tourny time; the instant cascades leave no time for grabbing a bite between games! Guess I'll just have to cope with that one . . . it's probably a benifit to me in the long run. Anyway, happy net-celling, friends! Until next time! |
| 2002-07-06 | greggory | I don't win these tournaments too often, so I like to take advantage whenever I get to make some winner's comments. My strategy tonight was the same as it was every time, win the 12-sum and 13-sum games as fast as possible, then pray I don't get stuck on some of the harder games. Usually I get stuck and some other great players (mickyiw, WRAC, JC and a few others) will always beat me. Tonight the planets were properly alligned I was able to manage the 6x5s and 7x4s without any real trouble, in fact this tourney seemed a little easier than most masters tournaments, that probably favored all the speed freaks out there. Congrats to WRAC for a great effort, to win by less than a minute, I can't help to feel a little lucky. |
| 2002-06-29 | mick126 | Did everyone else get booted off at the start? That probably explains this win. Just barely eeked it out with Crunch. Not much to say about this one. Decided to blast my ears with as much old rock and roll as possible. Everything from old Van Halen to much older Joe Walsh, Grand Funk and a little Zeppelin to ensure proper brain damage. Was thinking about the soundtrack from "Aida" but decided against it. As always--best of luck in future tournies to all you cellers. Everyone enjoy the 4th. It means alot more this year to this New Yorker and I hope to all of you. Later |
| 2002-06-22 | jbranick3 | don't know if I am more shocked that I won, or that my phone didn't ring once the whole time. Really didn't think I had a chance when I was having trouble with an easier game early. By the time I did all the 10, 9's and 8x4's, I was only a few games back. At the time there were 30 games solved, I only had 28. I thought it was over. took me 10 minutes or so for the last 2 games. 30 games down, 5 place or so, I figured not too bad. Let me check whats left. a 6x4 and a 7x4. I try the 6x4 and it just seems possible. I was thinking a couple things are possible. 1. It just can't be done. 2 People ae workign on the 7x4. 3. few people gave it a cursory look and just didn't see it at first and are close to finishing.
Took me a few tries. had to move a stack to an 8 clubs to free the 8 of spades here, had to not cover a 6 there, but I finished it and was shocked that noone else had. Matter of fact thought that 6x4 was easier than game
2's 7x4. Checked the last game, didn't click for me, so I waited 1/2 an hour to hope noone else solved it for the elusive 32. Funny how certain games click with certain people. And other easier games can stump you. Like that damn 9x3 I couldn't get right away. Now the reason people are reading. Musical selection. Tenacious D, followed by a punk complilation
albulm |
| 2002-06-15 | WRAC | There really isn't much to say this week. I mean, what can you say when you beat some of the best solvers of the really tough deals (pcu, marcia7, greggory, Beowulf) by two full games? I suspect you can only be grateful for your luck (and for the fact that mabb, mickyiw and JC didn't play - although I wish they had), and then go on to the next week where you will likely perform just as badly as you did well this week. That's life, so you might as well simply enjoy the up times, and not take it as a sign that you are the second coming of mickyiw. Musically, I started out with Staind "Break The Cycle," which almost turned out to be a fatal choice - just a bit too dismal for some of the nasty 6x5s in this evening's selection. So I switched over to the new Elton John, "Songs From The West Coast" (if you like early Elton and you don't own this, what are you waiting for?), and quickly moved up into first place. Here I managed to stay, although it was a very close battle with pcu until I managed to solve the last two games. Thanks to Denny for the new speedy Windows version! |
| 2002-06-01 | mick126 | My brain hurts!! I'd like to (sniff) thank my parents (weep), my agent (sob). Seriously though, folks :) I never figured on winning one of these things. I don't play for time. I just love having 32 freecells thrown at me. And since a few previous winners like to share their music tastes with everyone I'll just say if you put on a nice mix of Counting Crows, Cowboy Junkies, and Dire Straits you won't care if you get all the games in. Best of luck to everyone in the future tourneys. And a huge thanks to the creators of this site. Love every bit of it. |
| 2002-05-25 | WRAC | Oh my. The way she was playing, it didn't look like anyone was ever going to beat mickyiw in a two-hour tourney again. I am definitely going to savor this one. You know, whenever a particular game has a big 0 in the win column in the second half of a tournament, I figure there are three possibilities. First, it may be impossible, or second, it may just be extremely difficult. Those are obvious. But there's a third possibility. The game may only be moderately difficult, tough enough so that nobody gets on the first try, but the main reason it hasn't been solved yet is that the everyone is concentrating on the games which they know can be won. That's something I always keep in mind. With Owsley (debut album) on the CD player, I started slowly tonight (just a coincidence). The second deal I attempted was an innocuous looking 6x6 level 9. I didn't zip through it, but I think I had it in four or five minutes. Then I went after a 7x5, but gave up on it after a few minutes. That inauspicious start had me in 23rd place, but little did I know I had already seen the two most difficult deals of the evening! Eventually, I got the tougher deals done (except for the 7x5), and started flying through the 10x3s. By now, I had switched over to Steve Forbert (the outtake collection "Young, Guitar Days" - a must for all fans), and completed my 31st game 75 minutes into the tourney, passing mickyiw to go into first place alone. Still, no one had solved the 7x5, but I wasn't entirely comfortable, remembering Reason 3 above. For 17 minutes, I battled this nasty deal, becoming less and less convinced of its solvability. During this time, I maintained my one game lead over an increasing number of people, so the pressure wasn't too great. Then, suddenly, three people got to 31 in a hurry, and the psychology changed. No longer was it a game that (most likely) only I was battling. In particular, I feared greggory, who always seems to get the really tough ones, and of course, mickyiw, but there were quite a few good players whom I knew where entirely capable of winning. (Fortunately for me, mabb wasn't playing - she probably would have won tonight.) Anyway, I gave it another nine minutes, and finally managed to squeak it out. I then held my breath as I checked the updated standings, saw that only one person had solved the game, and then slowly let my heartbeat return to normal. Good thing I got it then too, as the others weren't far behind. Funny I got that 6x6 so quickly though. It looked at least a few people spent a lot of time on that one. Oh well, it never hurts to be lucky. And oh yeah, for the record, I've still never seen an impossible 7x5. |
| 2002-05-11 | mickyiw | Happy Mother's Day Micky. |
| 2002-03-30 | greggory | I think that the tournament itself should be declared the winner tonight. Not only did it give us 2 8x2's and a 9x2 that no one was able to win, but it also gave us a 10x3 that probably no one was able to play. The 16047 game was the first one that I played and after I finished it I noticed that a completely different game was disabled. I played 16047 again and nothing happened? Very wierd. Also in honor of Easter I played on my parents' computer tonight, and I hated it. I think I may have been kicked me off the network only 2 or 3 times during the tourney and generally their computer was very slow to respond. Despite all this somehow I managed to win. I would like to personally thank mickyiw, her decision not to play tonight helped make my victory possible. My victory wasn't pretty but I'll still take it. |
| 2002-03-23 | mabb | I very nearly didn't attempt tonight's tourny. I have been so unimpressed with my tourny playing lately, that I was quite inclined to just bypass the whole event. But you just never know, and I have so little resistance anyway. So what a surprise! The first 60-70 minutes were such a blast! I had taken WRAC's advice and started skipping all the 6x5's and 10-sums (.bow WRAC). Then I checked the stats to see where to go first on the second go-round. I think I had about 10 games to go after, and they all fell very quickly, in roughly this order (if anybody cares): Number 6, 8, 4, 19, 15, 22, and 17. Then I faced the final 45 minutes, and this is where my stomach gets weak, and why I'm not sure how much I love the all new and improved "tougher" tournies: I'm starting to tire, but have to think harder, while trying NOT to worry about all those competitors who can quite often pull a rabbit out of the hat! I don't remember where I was in the ranks at that point, I think second to WRAC. But, to win game #30 it may have been a matter of being in the right game at the right time, because several of us had reached the 29th game and were faced with three unwon games: a 7x3--11, a 6x5--8 and the 8x4--11. I wonder how many folks were going after the presumably easier 6x5. For my part, I would rather work on an 8x4 level anything, than mess around with a 6x5. So I camped out there, and it unravelled after several re-do's. Then, I did go back and attack the 6x5 for the rest of the night, because the 7x3 looked absolutely unholy to me. But they both proved unwinnable, at least in the allotted time. So there you have it. And for background noise, I mean music, tonight there was the complete sound track to Disney's orginal Love Bug movie, accompanied by the laughs, giggles and wild comments of my husband and three kids. I hope they'll watch it again with me tomorrow night, so I can have a master's win, AND a nice family memory from the same weekend! And may I please use this venue to make a humble request: to have the game numbers posted on the tournament page, if possible, so that it's easier to check on the stats of your remaining games, without trying to keep so many varients and levels in your head when switching to the stats screen. There's probably an easier way to do it, but I haven't figured it out, yet. Thanks again to the folks who run the show here at this site and to all the great players! |
| 2002-02-09 | JC | So I was stalled out at 29 games and fourth place overall... mickyiw had reached the 30 game mark a good 20, maybe even 25 minutes prior. I kept trying the one game she had won that I hadn't, but I always seemed to end up in the exact same dead end. As I executed the same opening sequence for the umpteenth time, I suddenly decided I didn't want this game to end up like all those other pitiful attempts. So on an impulse I made what looked like a couple of very weak moves in the middle of the game. (I couldn't do any worse, I figured.) That proved to be the turning point- the cards played themselves out and I finally got that game. I used my burst of self-confidence to rush right on ahead and win the 31st game in less than two minutes. I guess I was feeling so good that I didn't bother to let the fact that nobody else had solved it yet stand in my way. I never did give a serious effort towards number 32 though- I was too busy savoring my improbable wins in the two previous games... Congratulations to greggory for getting the 31st game as well. |
| 2002-02-02 | noangel | What a great honor it is for little old me to win a master's tournament and beating such players as the mighty mabb, Crunch, mick126 and WRAC. What makes my win so unbelieveable is the fact I started about 20 minutes late. I think some people must've got stuck on a bad game or maybe stopped to make a sandwich and give some of us other players a chance. I absolutely love the new tournament game selections, those toughies sure do brighten up my weekend and somehow make life seem more worthwhile. I've noticed people choose different music to listen to while playing, so I searched around my collection for some inspiration. Imagine my joy when i discovered my long forgotten Slim Whitman CD! Unfortunately, after several minutes of play, my CD player refused to work so i had to resort to my back up CD, The Best of Britney Spears. I gleaned so much inspiration from her deep and meaningful lyrics. I really believe that without Britney's help I would not have won this prestigious event. Thank you Britney. |
| 2002-01-26 | WRAC | Once again, I was lucky enough to get a real stumper, in this case 6x4 4009-11. Otherwise, there would have been no hope of catching mickyiw (who has been playing at frightening speeds lately), not to mention sprucegoose, Beowolf (welcome back!) and a bunch of other fine players. Long live the 10-sum games! But just to prove that one should never get too confident, I was almost done in by the 7x4 which was solved by 11 people. So one never knows. As for music, I chose disc 3 of Elton John's boxed set, "To Be Continued." Yes, there are the overplayed '70s tunes such as "Philadelphia Freedom" and "Island Girl," but the obscure hits, rarities (such as "Ego") and previously unreleased tracks make this album a fine accompaniment to an evening of free cell. A WRAC recommended album for all fans of pop music. |
| 2002-01-19 | WRAC | Musically, I went back to the basics this week: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the best band to play freecell to. Thanks to mick126 and the others for the competition - it got pretty exciting at the end there. As for the last 6x4, I'm pretty sure it's not solvable, but not absolutely convinced. I came within one cell of getting it several different ways. Anyway, there I was, agonizing over it for almost half an hour, while wondering if someone else already got it. But hey, that's what makes these harder tournaments so much fun! |
| 2002-01-12 | WRAC | Wow - I was so far behind JC and PrettyOne for a while that I'd pretty much lost realistic hope of winning. And when Elvis Costello sang, "Step right up and show your face, we only want the *pretty ones*," it seemed a sure sign that it wasn't my night. But, with the tough games at the end, you never know who is going to get stuck, so, after making a mental note to never again listen to Elvis on Saturday evenings, I went on to the 7x3s. Finally, after winning the 7x4 (which didn't seem to bother me as much as it did some other people -- it was the 6x5-11 that almost killed me), came the time I dread most, the check of the leaderboard to see if anyone beat me to it. At that moment, it's out of your hands; there's nothing you can do but hope... and, well, this week anyway, it came out in my favor. Finally, at the risk of being redundant, I'd like to once again thank Denny for cranking up the difficulty level on the tourneys - they're simply much more exciting now! |
| 2002-01-05 | JC | I love love love playing tournaments. Especially the more recent ones that seem to throw in more "toughies." In this case, we all got down to those last three really tough games and spent the last 30 minutes or so duking it out to see who could get them first. I'm looking forward to the next event. |
| 2001-12-22 | WRAC | After tonight's tourney, I believe I am entitled to write "The Complete Idiot's Guide To The Masters Tournament" and perhaps even "Freecell for Dummies" as well. Why? Read on and find out. First off, I got home this evening just in time for the tournament. Or, more specifically, I was a minute late. But when I tried to play, instead of seeing "119 minutes remaining," I saw "Tournament closed (play for fun)." Checking the tournament page, I found the NetCELL clock was about 14 minutes behind. Ah, time to get comfortable, grab a snack, and put on Tom Petty's Greatest Hits. (Not exactly the best freecell music, but for the past half hour, I'd had an irresistible urge to hear "American Girl," so on it went.) After that, it was business as usual - click through the 8x4s, 7x5s, etc., trying not to fall too far behind mickyiw. For the most part, I managed to stay within two or three games, reaching 28 just a couple of minutes behind her. Then came the dreaded 7x3. Of the remaining four, it was the only one that had been solved, so I attacked it next. And failed miserably. And again. As best as I can figure, I spent about 28 minutes on this game before finally getting it. Pathetic. It was tough, but not *that* tough. I was so disgusted with myself, I didn't even check the standings. (I figured seeing all the people who had passed me would just make me miserable... little did I know I was still in second place.) So I looked at the bottom of the page only, and saw that the three remaining games were still unsolved. There was still hope! If I could just get one of those three fairly quickly... Of the three, one was an 8x2 which I had seen earlier and deemed highly unlikely. The other two were as-yet-unseen 9x2s. Picking one of these at random, I gave it a few shots and started to think it might be winnable. Alas, the clock struck 10:00, and I didn't quite have it yet. Now, if I have one ingrained trait, it's that I'm a stubborn bastard. I won't give up on a game that seems winnable, regardless of the clock. (I once turned a 45-minute tourney into a two-hour affair, finally battling a 6x5 into submission.) So I kept playing, and at 10:06, I got it. Boy, was I frustrated. If only I hadn't been so dense on that 7x3, I could have been the winner! Feeling the need to vent, I quickly sent off an e-mail to Libby, telling her how close I came. Back came the message, "but you're leading... and there's still two minutes left!" (Thankfully, she didn't append the word "moron" to her reply.) By the time I read her message, time had expired, so it was not until then that I remembered the tournament had started late. I'd gotten so wrapped up in the 7x3, I'd completely forgotten. And by being too annoyed to check the standings, I hadn't seen how much time was remaining. So there I was, calmly (or not so calmly, actually), catching up on my e-mail during the last six and a half minutes of play, thinking I'd finished second. Yes, by then, I had finally scrolled up to check the standings, but had neither pressed refresh - which I had last done shortly after 10:00, or looked at the official time, so I had no idea I had actually won! Apparently, being a complete idiot does not preclude one from winning a NetCELL tournament - hence my proclaimed right to the authorship above. Thanks, as always, to Denny, and to Libby, for paying better attention than I did. And, oh yeah, I finally just now took a peek at the other 9x2. Doesn't look possible, but... |
| 2001-12-15 | WRAC | Talk about sweating bullets. I had a hunch that 8x2 was solvable, but I just couldn't get it... until a minute after the tournament ended! Imagine my frustration when, after finally solving it, I glanced at the clock and saw it was 10:01. But then imagine my relief when I saw that no one else had solved it either. Still, if only the tournament had been a minute or so longer. Of course, for all I know, JC solved it 30 seconds after the tourney ended, so perhaps it was for the best. I guess. Which is better? To solve all the winnable games in the allotted time or to win the tournament? I guess it really doesn't matter, they're both good. And let's face it, I was very lucky to (barely) beat JC to 31. What does matter is these tournaments are a hell of a lot of fun to play, especially since they got harder, giving more people a chance to win. Also, I must give myself credit for switching Bruces - tonight's musical accompaniment was Bruce Hornsby's vastly under-appreciated Spirit Trail. Those who have heard the album surely would agree that "Preacher In The Ring" is the perfect song to play 6x5s to. Part II, that is; Part I is better suited for 7x4s. Thanks again to Denny, who has finally caught on to the fact that the real money is, and always will be, in merchandising, and to the other players for the competition. DC-XA, it was nice to see you again - come back more often! |
| 2001-12-08 | WRAC | Now that was FUN! Whether you love tough games or hate them, you have to admit they make for more exciting tournaments. Unless, of course, your idea of excitement is to see if mickyiw can win 32 games in less than 45 minutes. It isn't mine. This tourney, however, had a nice mix of different levels of games. I played these in fairly random order, except saving the 10-sums and the 6x5s for the end. After finishing 26, I checked the stats, and saw that four games still hadn't been solved, so I quickly went after the other two. That done, I had 28, but mickyiw had 29, and sure enough, one of the four (the 7x3) had now been solved by one person. (The other three were still unsolved). So I did that one, checked the stats again, and found that micky and I were now tied at 29, and none of the three remaining games had been won. I took a gamble and played with the 6x4 for a while, and, although I soon developed a hunch it was winnable, I couldn't do it. Back to the stats, and there was micky with 30, having won the last 6x5. Of course, every game is easier once you know it's winnable, so I then won that one, and found myself again tied with micky at 30, albeit seven minutes or so behind. I have to admit I was feeling a little guilty at this point, letting micky do the hard work for me, but hey, Denny provides the stats, so I might as well use 'em! Now, all that remained were the 6x4 and the 8x2, neither solved. But, as I said, I had a hunch about the 6x4, so I went back to it, and eventually knocked it off. Surprise! I had actually taken the lead! If the 8x2 were unsolvable, it would be my tourney. I played it for a while, but didn't really get anywhere. Not even close. A win for WRAC was looking likely. But then, with about 8 minutes left, I checked the stats again - someone had solved it! Uh oh, I thought, here comes micky. But no, it wasn't her; she still had 30, and the 6x4 had still only been solved by one person. My lead seemed fairly safe (either she or mick126 would have to win two very tough games in 10 minutes, or sprucegoose would have to win three), but it wasn't certain. Besides, what kind of victory is it when someone solves a game you didn't? So, with new confidence of its solvability, I went after the 8x2 again, and, after a few more tries, I got it. Some days you're on a roll and some days you aren't. Don't ask me to explain it because I can't tell you. The main thing is you have to believe you can solve them, but even that doesn't work sometimes. As for music, this week's accompaniment was, of all things, Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits. Now I know what you're thinking: how can anyone possibly play freecell to Bruce, especially such an ill-chosen selection as his greatest hits? Well, the answer is that you really can't, but fortunately the album had ended before I got to the Final Four, so I played those in silence. Maybe that's the secret. Anyway, special thanks to Denny for toughening up the tourneys and giving us mortals a chance to beat micky every now and then. |
| 2001-11-24 | greggory | WOW!!!! I won!!!! Let me just say that that was a real nasty tournament. After about 60 minutes I noticed that there were still three games that noone had won yet. I was able to dust off all the games I knew where winable and then I bounced back and forth between the three remaining games. I think it maybe my second or third attempt at the 8x2 game when I felt it was winable. Lord only knows how many more attempts it took me to figure that sucker out. I got worried after mickyiw solved the 8x2 thinking she might win. But thankfully those last two games where impossible to solve. I should know after spending the last half hour of the tournament trying to solve those damn games. Now I don't mind the harder tournaments, but can we at least try not to have so many impossible games. I feel that spending the final minutes of a tournament trying to solve an impossible game is very condusive to insanity. Anyway I hope everyone who celebrated turkey day had a good Thanksgiving. See you next week. |
| 2001-11-17 | mabb | So, WRAC, I guess we have YOU to thank for this little head-banging tourny tonight! You certainly seem to have gotten your wish! (although I weakly recall seconding the motion) Was this the first time to face an 8x2 and a 7x3 in a tourny, or is it just my poor memory? Nonetheless, I'm gratified to have a second "master's feather" in my cap; I feel a *bit* more legit now. My strategy (?) is to get through each vertical column in 10-15 minutes, leaving no more than 2 games un-won in each column. If I can do that, and the re-do's go well, I stand a good chance for 2nd or 3rd! But tonight, after my first run through, the grid looked awful - too many re-do's to count! The 7x3-11 was NOT among them, though - that one was a total gift from Someone Upstairs. I won it first time through in 1:50, and I rejoiced for the bit of precious time it might buy me. But friends, I couldn't repeat that if my life depended on it! Fortunately, most of the re-do's fell my way quickly, but there were still several that required 3 or more tries. The last one was the 8x2, and even that one surprised me by going down fairly soon, I think after 4 or 5 tries. If you want to know how I did it, ask WRAC or one of the others, because I'm sure I couldn't tell you!! Not that my 161 hours of Net-cell "practice" are for naught. It's just that my weakness, among others, is not paying much attention to what I'm doing, frequently repeating the same losing moves and hoping for different results (insanity defined, right?). But I must send out thanks to my hubby, who kept the refrains of our (recently dubbed) Triple Commotion Choir (ages 9, 7 and 4) to a minimum by settling in with them for a movie. He even handled the popcorn and coke floats - what a hero! Also, I wanted to say that I've been meaning to tiptoe into the chat room, but I'm stirring up some courage first, because, (a) I'm embarassed that I don't know all those fancy emotes (that recent list on the discussion board was very helpful, though, thank you), (b) I'm painfully shy, and (c) I'm afraid I will love it TOO much, thus taking even MORE time away from my family, which is already neglected in near-criminal fashion! And one small aside to Laffman: please forgive my uncouth behavior on the discussion board some weeks back; you're such a gentleman that you've probably already forgotten, but I still wish to offer my humble apology. In sum, thanks to all the wonderful competitors who make the victory so sweet, and to all the "worker-bees" who make the competition possible! Take care, friends! |
| 2001-10-13 | mickyiw | I really thought i should make the effort and write a comment, there are no words of wisdom as quite frankly i'm not very wise. I was suprised to see i'd won this week after giving up on that nasty 6x5 way before the tourney was over. I thought maybe some of the more persistant players might have cracked it. I personaly find 6x5 a completely detestable variant, they should be rounded up and cast into a dark bottomless pit, never to see the light of day again! I also played completely sober this week, quite a feat, eh?. I listened to David Gray's White Ladder CD this week, so i'd have something to write, although i'm not sure this influenced my game play but it mellowed me out. See you all next Saturday, i hope :) |
| 2001-09-22 | JC | "My win is a case of persistence paying off. I was actually the second player to reach 31 games- a full ten minutes behind mickyiw. But long after mickyiw, Laffman, and probably a few other great players gave up on that last remaining 6x5, I kept plugging away. Eventually I surprised myself by solving it. Congrats to WRAC for also hanging in there until the bitter end!" |
| 2001-09-15 | WRAC | Perhaps someday I'll look back at this victory with some pleasure, but for now it has done nothing to erase the sick feeling in my stomach. I can only hope for two things. First, that in our haste to bring to justice those responsible for this horror, we don't bring ourselves down to their level. Far too many innocent lives have been lost already. Second, that in this time when we have lost so much, we can somehow take solace in the loves and pleasures we have that remain. That's all I have to say except that tonight's musical accompaniment was The Left Banke, "There's Gonna Be A Storm, The Complete Recordings 1966 - 1969," an album which always makes me sad, and never more so than tonight. |
| 2001-08-25 | WRAC | Hmm. Now I'm beginning to find out what it's like to be mickyiw and be asked to write Winner's Comments for two consecutive weeks. (Only about eight more weeks and I'll really know what it's like...) So what about this week? With a line-up that looked like the season winner's list (but where was Laffman?), I figured I didn't have much of a chance. Sure enough, micky raced ahead to 31 games while the next players were barely out of the teens. Then there was a nasty 7x4. I tell ya, ya gotta love these games which give the rest of us mortals the chance to get lucky and catch up. In this particular case, I was staring at a stuck position, lamenting the fact that the 5 of spades wasn't the 5 of clubs, when, it suddenly occurred to me, if I replayed the start a little differently, I might indeed be able to switch the two cards. After that, it was easy. (Clear column 3, then pile up the clubs - was that how you solved it, DC-XA?) All I can think was it must have been the music that provided the inspiration. And that, if you haven't guessed already, would be the last Dire Straits album, On Every Street. (Not counting, of course, the solo Mark Knopfler efforts, which, by the way, everyone should buy). I liked this one so much, I just might use it every week. Which reminds me, mabb, please discard the plane tickets I sent - I've decided not to use your kids as background after all. In summary, I can only quote tonight's most appropriate lyric. "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug." Next week, I'll likely be the bug again, so I'm going to savor this one until then. |
| 2001-08-18 | WRAC | Hey, what happened to the Winner's Comments? Are we so insecure in our freecell prowess that we dare not reveal our strategies in fear that others might then beat us? Well, I'm not! In an attempt to revive the tradition of Winner's Comments (and a fine tradition it was, I might add), here's the approach I used for last night's tournament. First, put on disc 1 of the Rolling Stones' More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies). Second, play the 9x2s to "Not Fade Away." Third, ignore the lyrics to "Out Of Time." Finally, save the last 6x5-11 (which turned out to be surprisingly easy) for "It's All Over Now." Guaranteed to win every time. Sure. Actually, my strategy was the same as it ever was: play every week, waiting for the weeks mickyiw doesn't show up, and hope for enough luck to beat the other fine players such as mabb and DC-XA. What more can I say except thanks to Denny for the continued improvements to the site! |
| 2001-08-04 | mabb | I'm so very pleased to join the esteemed ranks of the winner's circle! I just have one burning question: Mickyiw - how late DID you start anyway? This tourney was tough for someone who primarily enjoys the speed of the game, more than the technical side. (Thus, my pathetic streak record). After an hour and a quarter, I had three games remaining, and I checked the stat board to find myself in the lead with ALL of my remaining games as yet unsolved by other players! Instant tension headache! When I knocked off one more I checked again to find that Lee_Cobb had finished his 30th game about 2 minutes before me! But after grunting out game 31, I was back (barely) in the lead, still with 12 MINUTES remaining. An Eternity!! The last game went unsolved. I never thought I would hold that lead, with such talent out there! My nerves were wrecked at the end! In any case, I'm happy to have found this terrific site, even though the week I discovered it was the week of the FINAL prize-money tourney won by Laffman, last Feb/March, I guess. I found it of necessity when my hubby deleted the MS Freecell from our computer, and I went into severe withdrawal (he's not really such a tyrant - he just observed that as our combined addiction was growing, our domestic productivity had declined to the point that our 3 kids were virtually raising themselves as orphans! Not a pretty site, at all.) But, as water seeks its level, so an addict will seek its source. Even though I was up to game 5630 in the MS version, I happily adapted to the competitive nature of Netcell. I love the recently added column outlines when you click on them, but I still sometimes miss the undo option, and the flashing signal that tells you the end is near. And by the way, to WRAC, the only "music" I usually hear during tourneys (particularly when hubby is travelling, somewhat often) is the music of my 3 kids squabbling, and my 3-yr old's constant requests, such as - I need more milk, mommy; The video is finished, mommy; Can we play a game now, mommy? and -my favorite- I'm ready for you to wipe me, mommy! (Sorry to gross out any of you who may be uninitiated to parenthood!). Now don't you ALL wish you could play with such an advantageous atmosphere?!?! I'll just bet! One last note: I have occasionally played under the name of "lafflady", but there is no relation to Laffman, and I'm not at all presuming his level of talent; only hoping to share a bit of his karma since he was the tourney winner when I stumbled into the Netcell world. I hope you'll take no offense, Laffman. Until next time (and I certainly pray there IS a next time) . . . |
| 2001-07-07 | mickyiw | Great tourney, as always, though it appears that a few may have given up prematurely due to a few bugs on the scoreboard. Luckily for me I started the tourney late and didn't have time to check the board, or I may have joined them. As for any secrets to aid playing, music etc..I usually listen to whatever's in the CD player (too lazy to change it) personally I find a few drinks before a tourney helps me more than any music. And as it's 1am Sunday morning here when it starts I've usually had more than a few. I don't know if this strategy would work for anyone else, but even if it doesn't you'll have fun trying it out. Love the new changes, thanks Denny and all who help. .smile |
| 2001-06-30 | WRAC | Despite the fact that I was in 13th place early, and I won by a margin of what I'm guessing was about 0.03 seconds, I must admit I felt that victory was "in the bag" all along. Yeah, right. If this doesn't prove the old adage "I'd rather be lucky than good," it's time to retire it. More importantly, I think I'd better stop checking the standings so frequently - those fractional seconds definitely add up. In any case, tonight's strategy was developed "on the fly" after I totally messed up the first game I played, a not-so-difficult 7x5. As is customary, I checked the standings after the first game, mostly to see if mickyiw was playing (i.e., do I actually have a chance to win this week?), and found myself in 10th place. So, I thought, (rather vainly, I might add), why not pretend this slow start was actually intentional, and play all the hard games first? Or maybe it was just self-inflicted punishment for my initial bunglage (that's not a real word, is it?). But I won't psycho-analyze myself further here (you know, space constraints and all that). Anyway, that was the strategy I followed, starting with the 9x2s, 7x4 and 8x3s (no 6xXs this week!), slowly working my way to the easier variants, and leaving myself a big, fat, juicy 10x3 to finish with. If nothing else, this made it exciting, as I was still in third place as I worked on the last game. Congratulations to my (virtual) co-winner DC-XA on another fine performance; to mick126 on 9 consecutive top 5 finishes; and to all the other competitors who made this one of the most exciting battles yet. Oh, and special thanks to Denny for cleaning up the current streaks (which has actually only served to intensify my addiction) and to Laffman for what is probably the funniest thing to ever appear on this site (see two tournaments below). Finally, I would be remiss to not add that tonight's CD was "A Farewell To Kings" from Rush, perhaps their most underrated album, and surprisingly good accompaniment for 8x3s. |
| 2001-06-16 | Laffman | "I can't think of anything to say, so I'll try a Mad Lib approach... First and foremost, I'd like to thank [name of cartoon] and his [adjective] assistants. This was one of the most [adjective] victories ever. I almost choked on the [Netcell variant] game, but then I [past tense description of brilliant Netcell strategy], and it was clear sailing the rest of the way. I haven't been this [adjective] since the time I went to [place] and forgot where I put my [article of clothing]! Which just proves one thing: you shouldn't drink [favorite alcoholic beverage] and write a winner's speech at the same time. Also, never [verb] an angry monkey. Trust me on that one." |
| 2001-06-02 | WRAC | Tonight's strategy was to play to disc 1 of the Grateful Dead's Europe '72, saving the tough games for "Jack Straw" and "China Cat Sunflower." Whether or not this was a good plan, I can't tell you - there weren't any tough games this week! Or, if there were, I fortuitously stumbled upon the correct path on my first or second attempt, and thus didn't realize how tough they were. Or maybe the Dead are simply the ideal band to play freecell to. Don't ask me, I'm just as baffled by this win as anyone else. After finishing second each of the last 47 weeks (or so it seems), I can only conclude that the person who was supposed to beat me this week forgot to show up. Perhaps it was Laffman, who was in the race early, but then either lost his connection or (gasp!) found something better to do. Seriously, thanks to all the competitors for what was a close race until the very end - you made it another fun and exciting evening. |
| 2001-05-26 | DC-XA | Wow, I'm always surprised when I win -- this time, particularly, 'cause I haven't played in a few weeks. My dog jumped the fence and disappeared about a month ago, and I'm just now getting over it -- with the help of a puppy liberated from the pound. I must be getting over it pretty well, to win with people like WRAC playing. I'll take advantage of this unexpected soapbox to say: for cryin' out loud, get your pet's rabies shots up to date and put the tags on his collar; it will be a comfort to you in case Animal Control gets him. And take a picture of your dog or cat. I didn't have a photo, and one would have helped a lot with the lost-dog signs and ads. |
| 2001-05-19 | JC | I know I've said it all before, but it bears repeating. Thanks to Denny and all who work tirelessly on the site. And thanks to the players who provide such great competition day in and day out. It's the high level of competition that keeps me coming back for more." |
| 2001-05-05 | Laffman | "Sorry, my fingers have laryngitis this week..." |
| 2001-04-28 | Laffman | This time, aside from a pat on the back for the usual suspects, I'd like to specifically thank libby for managing the winner's comments. Libby, thanks for making it possible for us to publicly dissect our victories and proclaim our everlasting humility from week to week! |
| 2001-04-14 | Laffman | The stumpers saved me this week - not because I'm any better at them, but because without them, I have practically no chance at catching up to some of the unbelievably speedy players these days. Although many of the old pros are still around and providing great competition, I'd say there's more great players than ever, and these tourneys are getting increasingly harder to win. As always, thanks to Denny, his magic elves, and the great players who make the competition fun. |
| 2001-03-31 | WRAC | This was a tale of two tournaments: the first 31 games, which I somehow managed to sail through in an almost (but not quite) JeffMo-esque 61 minutes, and the 6x5, which I battled for a mind-numbing 50 minutes. All that time, I envisioned myself gradually sliding down the leader board (I didn't dare peek!), but, as luck would have it, everyone else struggled with this game as well. Curiously, when I finally solved it, it didn't seem as difficult as some other recent tournament games, but I think it had more than its share of false routes, making it deceptively tough. Alas, there is still much for me to learn in the art of tournament play. The good news: I've finally settled on the perfect band for musical accompaniment - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - so I'm making some progress. Thanks to Denny for continuing the tournaments, to Crunch for another close battle, and to mickyiw for letting someone else win this week! |
| 2001-03-03 | Laffman | In this weeks tourney, the first came last, meaning that Game 1, a monster of a 7x4, was the last one I got, and it sure wasn't easy. I might have given it up as unsolvable if I hadn't seen that someone else had already solved it! I was convinced that whoever it was would pass me by before I could crack it, but lucky for me, there was another tough 7x4 in the mix, and I suspect he/she was in the same boat on that one. I'm very happy with my "bookend" victories, but I'm sure I won't get to gloat for long. Thanks to the other competitors for the usual stiff competition, especially JC, WRAC, babydaddy, BJPW, and DC-XA this week. And as always, thanks to Denny and friends. |
| 2001-02-24 | Laffman | Thanks as always to Denny and the magic elves who maintain this great site, and to the excellent competition who made this an especially satisfying victory. So often in the past, I've been done in by a few tough 6-variants at the end, but by some stroke of luck, I managed to get them first this time, even though there were a bunch of 'em. My Netcell addiction has been a little more under control lately (this week excepted), so that's why I haven't been around as much. However, it's always nice to pop in for an occasional catch-up with my chat buddies, or play a tourney here and there against such top-notch competition. |
| 2001-02-17 | WRAC | i told everybody the first time i play in the tournament i would win and i did. i had to rent a computer though. i am going to be setting more new streaks too. i believe my main competitor right now is anthony. it used to be viperjm1. but he stopped competing me when he lost the 6x6 race. madame speaker should be proud of me now. see you in another twelve weeks when i am eligible to win cash again. |
| 2001-02-10 | JC | DC-XA was with me the whole time- sometimes as little as 15 seconds separated us. Even up until the 32nd game, the difference was only about a minute. Great match! Thanks to Denny and all the other volunteers for making the site so wonderful... I continue to spend more time on this site than on every other place on the internet combined!" |
| 2001-02-03 | mickyiw | Great tournament, as always. The lead changed hands several times but i think my secret weapon(a bottle of wine before the tourney)helped me win, eventually. I'll be putting the money to good use as it will be going into my "Chicago or Bust Fund" .smile A big thankyou to all who make this site possible and keep the chatroom a pleasurable and safe place to visit. .grouphug |
| 2001-01-27 | DC-XA | To say I am gobsmacked is putting it mildly, my ghast is well and truly flabbered! I cannot believe I've actually managed to win one of these things. The Tournaments are great fun, win or not, but what I really appreciate is the entire world of NetCELL which keeps my addiction well and truly fed. Great chat, great people and a great game. Big thanks to Denny for providing this wonderful site and to the team that keeps it all together. Brilliant!! |
| 2001-01-20 | anthony | I am thrilled that I actually won. But more importantly, this is a fantastic site that I and many others enjoy. Many thanks to Denny, Libby and all who contribute to make this site a success. |
| 2001-01-13 | mickyiw | Wow! What a way to win. Mickyiw was smoking! The tournament is always exciting. Thanks to you guys once again for a great web site! |
| 2001-01-06 | Zonny | With the right slate of games, and a little luck, it's possible to finish a 32-game tournament in under an hour. (Maybe I should take sinus medicine before all the tournaments!) As always, thanks go out to Denny for creating a group of websites that help define what is cool about the internet." |
| 2000-12-30 | mickyiw | I think I've never been so ashamed in my life! Up to now, I was convinced I could win ANY 32-game tournament against ANY competition! But when I took my first glimpse at the stats I found myself at No 6, then a couple of games later still there. That's when I panicked and rushed through all the 10x and 9x I had saved for the end when my concentration would slack. That bought me some places all right, but I was still only second, JeffMo in the lead then. I played on for dear life, and was deeply ashamed to see mickyiw win, although it was me who got the money. I consoled myself with the thought that it was the dead of night for me (2 a.m. to 4 a.m.) and everybody else had far better conditions, but from jcj's posting I gather that mickyiw lives in the UK and is thus only an hour ahead of me -- to my even greater embarrassement! I think I will spent the prize money on a ticket to London and go to the NetCELL meeting there to face my nemesis there, if he or she shows up. And just one more thing: I'd really really come more often and offer competition, if the time was a bit more human for me. .grouphug |
| 2000-12-23 | WRAC | A curious layout for this week's tourney: nine 10x3s, no 6xXs, and only a handful of games which could be described as even moderately difficult. If some or all of {JeffMo, JC, Laffman, liane} had showed up, I suspect we might well have seen the first ever sub-one-hour performance. But alas they didn't, leaving me to battle it out with the always dangerous mickyiw and several others. Now I used to consider the lack of difficult games to be a veritable death sentence for me, but I think I've gotten better at resisting the impulse to "click first, ask questions later." At least tonight, I slowed down my pace just enough to keep my accuracy up. As I posted on the discussion board recently, I think getting into the proper pace/rhythm is the key to optimal performance, and tonight I was lucky to find it early. This is more often not the case, but I'm beginning to realize the effect of the proper background music. Tonight's selection was Hooray for Boobies by the Bloodhound Gang. The upbeat tempos and catchy melodies make this band the perfect companion for 8x4s and 9x3s, the only trick being to ignore the terminally offensive lyrics (which at times make Eminem sound like Donny and Marie). I guess I managed to do this because I don't remember needing two tries for any game until the 9x2-11, the last one I attempted. This was the only game I really struggled with; the five or six minutes it took me cost me my sub 60. (However, when I checked the game stats, this was not the consensus most difficult game - there were nine others which were solved by less people, which just goes to show: you never know when or where you'll develop a blind spot.) In a typical tournament, I suspect I play at least 6-10 games more than once, some five or six times. Even so, I didn't feel I was playing all that well tonight, and really didn't expect to be the winner when I finally checked the results after finishing. Surprisingly, it was the 10x3s that made me doubt myself - ostensibly because I didn't take them seriously enough. I spent over 3 minutes on at least two of them, squirming to extricate myself from the what were most likely more-difficult-than-necessary positions I had maneuvered myself into. So there's definitely a lesson there for me - take all games seriously, and don't play too fast! Again thanks to all the competitors and site contributors - merry Christmas and best wishes for 2001 to all! |
| 2000-12-16 | babydaddy | A very exciting tournamant, especially going against Babydaddy. I believe his (or her?) tactic is to solve the easier ones first, while i tend to solve them more or less at random, so we passed each other at least 3 times for first place... As you can see, i got beat by about a minute, so congrats to Babydaddy ! I hope i can challenge him again anytime soon, perhaps more often if the tournamant schedule rotates back to sundays :) (hint hint....) |
| 2000-12-09 | babydaddy | Thanks for providing and maintaining such a great site! The tournaments are great too! Too bad that I cannot join you guys more often. This is the first time that I've been able to allocate 2 hours on a Saturday night, ironically because my wife caught the flu bug lying in bed. But I did all the grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning today, so I am not feeling too guilty. My strategy is to play easier games first (descending number of columns). When there are only 7x5, 6x6, 6x5 games left, I would check the status page to see which of them are the toughest. Oh, congratulations to the real winner -- babydaddy! Finally, I would suggest that we move the tournament to a different time slot, Saturday or Sunday mornings. Can we take a vote? No recount please! |
| 2000-12-02 | WRAC | I'm also DC-XA, a regular also-ran here. I'd like to thank WRAC and trw for already being winners, and a multitude of others for not competing this week. Helpful hint: Only compete in tournaments that don't include 6x5s! |
| 2000-11-25 | JC | I've spent countless hours playing freecell the last few years. Every now and then my wife will voice her displeasure. I will use the winning to take her to a movie or something and perhaps buy some peace for a little while. |
| 2000-11-18 | JeffMo | The tournament was a tough one. My strategy is to play each game in the first column, then the second and so on. I try to not spend more than 3 1/2 minutes on a game. If it drags much more than that, I concede and move on to the next. Once I have attempted all games, I return to the first game I have conceded and continue in the same mannor. I think the incredible number of hours I spend on 7X3 games is what helps prepare me for the tournament. Lately though, I have begun practicing the 6X5 as that is always where I get hung up. |
| 2000-11-11 | rising | Sorry I can't join you guys more often, but between a demanding job, a demanding girfriend and a cat there's not much time left. My strategie was the same as last time, i.e. grouping the games. That leftover 6x5 really was a bitch! I kept trying 45 min for fear that somebody else might solve it and snatch away my victory. |
| 2000-11-04 | mickyiw | This whole Freecell site is great!! I love playing the variants, chatting to the friendly inhabitants, and wandering around the map etc. There were some good players tonight and i'm sure we'll see on the winners list soon, if they aren't there already. Just one question...Why is this site so addictive?? :-) |
| 2000-10-28 | marcia7 | I play freecell because it's fun, and I think it gives me a mental break from everything else for awhile. Yeah, that's it! It's...good for me! And if everyone played freecell, the world would be a saner place. Isn't it nice to solve world problems just by playing a game (religiously)? I like to practice 6 x 5...and the game that others got stuck on was one of those, so the practicing probably helped me luck-out today. Fun! |
| 2000-10-21 | babydaddy | FINALLY!!!!!! How rare, a tournament without a standard game. Suggestion to Denny: Let us be able to have a default setting in advance on what we want to play, when we sign in we can chose specifically what we want to play instead of having to chose every time what we want to play (i.e. just 9x4 or just tournament). And not to be sacreligous, but, the pop up ad(s) during tournaments is counterproductive. Maybe we could have it pop up when we set our default tournament setting before the tournament starts? I would personally like to say i enjoy the Sunday at noon time slot for the tourny. You say that the slot will be switched around but lately it has been all Sat. 8:00. I like the Sun tourney because you get to have 3 practice tournies on Sat and Sat is a great time to go out and party. By the way, the 4:00 a.m. slot is not being utilized by very many players, if anybody, and maybe that could be moved to a time when it can be played by more players. |
| 2000-10-14 | JeffMo | Once again, we had a great prize tournament, with some of the best competition available anywhere. I'm thankful that I was able to prevail this time, since many of those playing are certainly capable of winning on any given day. Right after the tournament, Crunch asked me what my "secrets" were. I told him, "I just hunkered down with an ice water and a leftover chicken sandwich, and had some fun." Crunch had forgotten his sandwich and attributed his third-place finish to that. So that's my advice this time around: "Don't forget your chicken sandwich, and don't forget to have fun." |
| 2000-10-07 | JC | The tournaments are GREAT! Thanks for providing such a super website. That JC is one heck of a player. I'll take second place to him(her?) any time. |
| 2000-09-30 | JC | "Taking my cue from Laffman and WRAC, I'm donating my winnings to NetCell. Thnaks to all who make this site fun!" |
| 2000-09-23 | TAvallone | Arrrgh! What's more frustrating than losing by four seconds? I'd rather lose by forty minutes. The only thing a four-second loss does is make you wonder what you could have done to finish faster. In my case, the answer is simple; I shouldn't have stopped to put in the new Bosstones CD when the Eve6 disc ended in the middle of the last 6x6. But enough lamenting the past. Instead, let me take this opportunity to a) congratulate TAvallone on yet another fine performance (ditto to aechang and babydaddy, both of whom I suspect we'll soon be seeing in the winner's circle); and b) plug the latest album by America's current finest band, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Buy it! In fact, buy all their albums. If you have any musical taste whatsoever, you won't be disappointed. But the radio station in me digresses. Let's talk about the prize money. Specifically, I've decided to decline it this time. Or, to put it another way, I'm donating it to freecell.com. Why? Certainly not because I'm opposed to the cash tournament. Au contraire, I love the way it attracts so many fine players. But at the same time I don't wish to lose sight of the fact that my purpose here is not to supplement my income, but rather to enjoy a competition which is both friendly and fun. (No, losing by four seconds doesn't qualify as fun.) Once again, many thanks to Denny, jcj and libby for their endless work maintaining this wonderful site! |
| 2000-09-16 | TAvallone | These tournaments have been such terrific fun!! and that was even before I (finally) won. I knew I was having a good night, but I know from experience that usually means everyone else is as well. Unlike many of you, I do not peek at the tournament standings until I am done playing so I have no idea who is playing or how I am doing until I am all done. What a thrill it was to see that I had finally finished first. Thank you all for providing such excellent competition and motivation to sharpen my playing skills. Thanks especially to Denny for maintaining the website. My only regret is that I don't have sufficient time in my life as the homeschooling mother of three to both play AND get to know you all in the chat rooms. I am sure you are all fine people, well worth knowing and bantering with....but...um...er...addiction is a hellish thing isn't it? |
| 2000-09-09 | liane | It seems that staying up until 2 a.m. (which was my local time when the tournament started), taking a taxi (since I don't own a car) to my office (as I don't have internet access at home) and playing during what is the dip in human biorhythm (c.f. publications by Wedderburn on this topic) proved worth it, for I managed to beat some of the best players and finest competition there is on freecell. It was an honour and great fun racing along with you guys! And thanks to Denny for providing this timesink... .curtsey |
| 2000-09-02 | viola | I'd like to say that it was great playing along with such deft players as babydaddy, aechang, DC-XA and WRAC for instance. Until the very last they were at my heels, and I was left with two expecially tricky games (9x2 and 7x5) towards the end. Had these proven more resilient, I might not have made it. So it's always luck playing a hand along with skill and practise. I'm especially happy to have made it this week, since it was my birthday on wednesday and this is an extra treat for me. |
| 2000-08-19 | Laffman | Again, I would like to thank you for making this site available. I would also like to extend my congrats to Laffman for a well played game. Obviously, his performance far exceeded mine. I must admit to being slightly distracted as the Redskin game was on and I was having to divide my attention between my two passions, football and freecell. |
| 2000-08-12 | Zander | There are unfortunately some cynics who may find it hard to believe that I completed all 32 games in 70 minutes starting at 2 a.m. my time, AND came second in the Sunday 0400 tournament, starting only five hours later - well actually I started six hours later, and couldn't quite catch babydaddy. Well, it's true, and Denny's scoring system cannot tell a lie (although if you look at the 4 a.m. tournament, you will find that some games were won by four players although there were only two playing). But, as they say in Europe, "Luegen haben kurze Beine", which being translated into Scots comes out as "Lees hae lang legs." So I have to admit that I have liane visiting me at the moment, enjoying the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama etc., coaching me in the finer points of unravelling impossible games, and - oh well, I admit it - playing some games under my name at utterly incredible speeds. I have therefore asked that my winner's cheque be given to Amnesty International, which will also cheat the bankers out of the 25% they would take if it was sent here. I can't stop without thanking Denny for undermining my productivity for the past 3 years, and introducing me to some of the sweetest, cleverest and wickedest people imaginable, and the infinitely subtle social language he invented. Hey, now that 12 weeks have past, why don't we have a closed knock-out championship of champions? I'd be really interested to know who is the best, given the same set of games. Or perhaps we should delay that one until the year end? |
| 2000-08-05 | Laffman | First off course congrats to the real winner Laffman and the runner-up Christine. About winning tactics I can only say this : only let the previous winners pass you ! -- Junky |
| 2000-07-23 | rising | Hi freecell-folks, my strategy with the tournament was to bundle the games into groups with the same no. of columns and to play those groups in descending order, that is first all 10x, then all 9x etc. I was in a very extraordinary mood during the tournament, almost as in trance or under hypnosis, my hand clicking away the cards without my brain thinking about it. This lasted until I had finished 29 games and only the 6x were left. They in turn gave me a really hard time and I lost about 15 min only for these three games. When I checked afterwards, I was very pleased to see that I still had the lead! My greetings to all the great competitors and to the makers of this site. |
| 2000-07-16 | JeffMo | I've been very impressed with the level of competition during the tournaments, and the prize tournaments in particular. In order to win against this field of talented players, you must certainly play well, but it also helps if you are fortunate enough not to waste too much time on the harder games. I'm thankful that this was my week to win some of the harder games on the first or second attempt. Some things that have helped me improve are (1) practice, practice, practice on those variants which I typically find most difficult, and (2) check the Game Stats on the tournament page after attempting all the games once. Checking the stats helps me either to know that all the games are winnable, or to avoid wasting too much time on a game which may be unwinnable (until I've finished the rest of them). Thanks again to Denny for a wonderfully addictive site! -- JeffMo |
| 2000-07-09 | Christine | Well, I still haven't finished on top in a money tournament yet, but I finally won on a technicality. If you keep playing long enough, all those folks who keep beating you fall into the "recent winners" category, so you're bound to qualify for the cash eventually. Congrats to the true winner this week, Christine, and the runner-up, trytrytrytryryagain. I jumped out to a quick start through about the first 28-29 games, but as is my usual habit, got bogged down in a couple of 6 variants at the end while the others passed me by. Speaking of which, I want to commend WRAC on last week's win, in which he was the only one to solve a particularly tough 6x5 game. I had written off the game as unsolvable, and never did find the solution on my own. He later re-created the solution for me, and earned my eternal respect as a freecell master. To the regular tourney participants, thanks for the always-great competition; to my chat buddies, thanks for the company; and to Denny (and his supporting cast), thanks for the whole shebang. --Laffman-- |
| 2000-07-02 | WRAC | Finally! I spend way too much time playing Freecell. At least now I've got something to show for it! My trick: I find it hard to concentrate during a tournament (even one that doesn't count) and checking the status makes it worse. So I refuse to even look until I've made my first "mistake." Thanks for providing so many hours of fun. |
| 2000-06-25 | Crunch | I must say that the tournaments are very exciting and get my adreneline pumping. During the weekly tournaments, I see all the great players kick butt (gluts) and leave everyone else in their wake. I know that to win, I have to play my best and be a little lucky avoiding the "path of darkness", unlike Darth Vader. One tip that helped me avoid the darkness was from JeffMo, which was to see what games are not being won and play them last. If an unwinnable game comes up, you are protected. The tournament started out with babydaddy, WRAC, and aechang off to a big lead, so I just hoped that I had picked more difficult games. Meahwhile, I avoided the games with 0 wins. I checked again an hour later and was surprised that I was in the lead and would probably win. I was exhausted at the end of the tournament. I really want to acknowledge Denny and all for making this a wonderful web site and creating a fantastic tournament. And, without great players for inspiration, there would be no great victory. Thanks to all. Crunch |
| 2000-06-18 | Christine | The tournaments have been great fun with some excellent competitors. I was beginning to think I would never win. This is the start of my career as a professional Netcell player :). Thanks Denny, for this great addition to the site. |
| 2000-06-11 | Viola | I'm trilled to have won the tournament. Maybe I learned a thing or two from my auntie whom I am very fond of. When I was a little child, she used to lay out her cards after tea and play patience. I watched her with fascination and I guess I not only inherited her passion for the game, but some feeling for strategy as well. With my best wishes and thanks Viola |
| 2000-06-03 | WRAC | So Denny, you said you wanted a male winner. Anything else I can do for you? Seriously, thanks ever so much for this site. I thought I loved Netcell before, but tournaments are the best! I have to admit I wasn't very optimistic about winning this particular one, not when I saw JeffMo's name pop up on the scoreboard. Having played against him in the evening tournaments, I know JeffMo is as quick and accurate as they come, right up there with JC and liane. Sure enough, it wasn't long before JeffMo and Outcast were well out in front of the rest of the pack. The only thing that gave me hope was the fact that there were five 6x games. I always seem to do better if there are quite a few of these, probably because I've practiced them more than most. In any case, I wasn't playing well at first, and I found myself well back (8th place or so, I think) in the first hour. In the second hour, I started to get into a nice groove, and eventually made it to 31 wins. I checked the scoreboard again; I was the fourth person to reach 31, and no one had yet won the remaining 6x6 (which I had taken a quick peek at earlier and quit immediately). Mentally, I resigned myself to my third consecutive 4th place finish, and having nothing more interesting to do, took a stab at the last game. Two quick attempts did nothing to change my opinion of its winnability. Then, and I can't tell you how because I don't remember, the cards started falling into place, and to my enormous astonishment, I had won. It was an amazing feeling; the only thing I can compare it to was winning my first ever 6x2 -- total shock and disbelief. At the risk of incurring further complaints of false modesty from jcj, I can only say that I was extremely lucky. Oh, and it sure didn't hurt that Ariana wasn't playing today. In closing, for those of you looking for the proper music to stimulate your brain while playing Netcell, I can offer the following. Being as I am currently playing my CDs more or less alphabetically, today's tournament was accompanied by Nirvana Unplugged and Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits. An interesting combination to say the least. |
| 2000-05-27 | liane | I really appreciate the work you put into that site, I absolutely love it and it has become a kind of second home to me. Thanks a lot!!! |
| 2000-05-20 | boonchai | I want to thank you for developing this website. Playing Freecell competitively is something I have been wanting to do for the last four years. The opportunity to compare my stats against others is really helpful. I'm ready to quit my day job as soon as Freecell moves to Vegas. |
| 2000-05-14 | qing2 | Here's what made this tournament unusual for me: I started a few minutes late! I'd been across the border in Juarez having dinner and a couple of Tecates, got home right at starting time and remembered the tournament was going on. It took precious time to fire up the computer, get on line, get the game loaded ... and I was flustered and just a touch inebriated, so I lost a number of games early on. So I figured I'd just play the rest as if it were a practice tournament. That, apparently, took the pressure off. Didn't know I was even in the running until after time was up. Even if I had started right on the hour, I wouldn't have beaten JC's time. Amazin'. Thanks for putting on these tournaments. The money's gravy; the competition really is fun. |
| 2000-05-07 | arch1 | As a stay-at-home mom from the suburbs of Atlanta, JC always hesitated when asked that inevitable 'what do you do?' question. But now that she's won the tournament prize, she plans to start introducing herself as a professional Netcell player..... |