How to use the FreeCell solver
- Find your deal number. Windows FreeCell shows it in the title bar or under Select Game, and our FreeCell game shows it above the cards. Any number from 1 to 1,000,000 works.
- Type it and press Solve. Or pick Today’s daily deal, the deal of the day in our FreeCell game, or one of the famous deals. The search runs in your browser and usually takes well under a second.
- Check the first board. Columns are numbered 1 to 8 from the left. If the cards do not match your game, it uses a different numbering and the moves will not fit.
- Follow the moves. Each line says which card moves where, such as “Move 7♠ from column 3 to a free cell”. Next and Back step through the boards, Play shows them all, and tapping a line in the list jumps to that board.
A move of several cards, such as “Move 3 cards, 9♥ down to 7♥, from column 4 to column 6”, is one supermove. Cards that are safe to send home go to the foundations by themselves after the move that frees them, as they do in Windows FreeCell and in our game. If your game does not do that, move those cards home yourself before the next line.
How FreeCell deal numbers work
A deal number is the seed of a shuffle. The FreeCell game in Windows put a simple random number generator to work on the deck, starting from the deal number, and dealt the cards out left to right, row by row, into eight columns: four of seven cards and four of six. The same number always gives the same deal, which is why players can share deal numbers and compare solutions. The original game had 32,000 deals; later Windows versions go up to 1,000,000, and this solver uses the same generator for all of them.
Famous FreeCell deals
- Deal #1. The first deal, and a friendly one: the solver finds a solution after checking a few hundred positions.
- Deal #617. Together with #1, the deal people use to check that a program deals the cards the way Windows does. It takes more searching than #1 but is not hard.
- Deal #11982. The only one of the original 32,000 deals that cannot be won, as has been widely reported for decades. The solver tries every reachable position and finds no win.
- Seven more up to 1,000,000. Deals 146692, 186216, 455889, 495505, 512118, 517776 and 781948 cannot be won either, and the solver proves each of them the same way.
How the solver works
The solver plays the same rules as our FreeCell game and uses the game’s own code for dealing and for checking each move. From the deal it looks at every legal move, scores the positions they lead to by how close they are to won (cards still out, cards sitting on lower cards and how deep the next cards the foundations need are buried, minus free cells and empty columns), and always continues from the most promising position it has not tried yet. Positions that differ only in which free cell holds a card, or in the order of the columns, count as the same position, and no position is tried twice.
It runs a few of these searches with different scoring, giving each more room in turn, up to 515,000 positions or 15 seconds in all. When one finds a won position, you get its moves. It is a good solution, not always the shortest one. When a search runs out of positions to try, every position the deal can reach has been checked, which proves the deal cannot be won. If it hits the limit first, it says it found no solution and does not claim the deal is impossible. In a test of 1,000 random deal numbers it solved all 1,000, almost all of them in well under a second.
FreeCell tips from the solutions
- Free the aces and twos first. Most solutions spend their first moves digging out the low cards, because every card above them is stuck until they go home.
- Count your room before you move a run. With 4 free cells you can move a run of 5 cards; one empty column doubles that to 10. Filling a single free cell drops it to 4.
- Empty a column when you can. An empty column is worth more than a free cell, and the solutions often spend several moves just to clear one.
- Do not rush cards home. A red 5 on the foundation can no longer hold a black 4 in the columns. The solutions send cards home when nothing needs them, which is what the automatic moves do.
Frequently asked questions
Can every FreeCell deal be solved?
Almost every one. Of the 32,000 deals in the original Windows FreeCell, only deal #11982 cannot be won. Of the deals from 1 to 1,000,000, eight cannot be won: 11982, 146692, 186216, 455889, 495505, 512118, 517776 and 781948. This solver proves each of those eight by checking every position the deal can reach. Every other deal it has been tested on has a solution.
Why is FreeCell deal #11982 impossible?
Because no sequence of moves wins it: however you play, four free cells are never enough room to dig out the cards it needs. In the 1990s players set out to solve all 32,000 Windows deals, #11982 was the only one nobody could win, and computer solvers have confirmed it since, as has been widely reported. This solver checks every position reachable from the deal, about 61,000 of them after merging positions that differ only in which free cell holds a card or in the order of the columns, and none of them is won.
Can I enter my own layout or a game in progress?
Not yet. This version solves numbered deals only, from the start of the deal. If you are partway through a numbered deal, solve it from the start here and compare the boards, or restart the deal and follow the moves. Games from apps that do not use the classic numbering cannot be entered.
Does the solution move one card at a time?
No, it uses supermoves: an ordered run of cards moves to another column as one move, like in most FreeCell games. A run of up to (free cells + 1) times 2 for each empty column can move, not counting the column it moves into, because that many cards could be moved one at a time through the free cells and empty columns. The solver never moves a longer run. Cards that are safe go to the foundations by themselves and are listed after the move that frees them.
Are these the same deal numbers as Windows FreeCell?
Yes. The deals are shuffled with the same number generator as the FreeCell game that came with Windows, so deal #1 here has the same cards in the same columns as deal #1 there. Deals 1 to 32,000 are the original set, and later versions go up to 1,000,000. Other FreeCell apps often use their own numbering, so check that the first column matches before you follow the moves.
Is the FreeCell solver free?
Yes. It is free, with no account and no download, and the search runs in your browser on your own device. Most deals are solved in under a second.