In a message dated 12/9/01 10:21:54 PM Pacific Standard Time,
aettlinger_at_worldnet.att.net writes:
> ... But, nevertheless, more people play
> Freecell on M/S Freecell than any other environment. (Any debate on
that?).
> Questions are sometimes asked by skeptical Freecell players who don't
> believe a given deal is solvable. If you want to give such a skeptic a
> written-out solution, unless you express it in moves that can be made on
M/S
> Freecell, they won't believe it is a valid solution.
Yes. Consider this very carefully. To communicate with everyday freecell
players, the freecell solver community is stuck with MS moves and autoplay
for now, just as everyday computer users are stuck with Intel architecture
for now. But we must not let that scourge be a permanent hobble for our
understanding of solver tactics and our march toward the perfect solver. Two
solution formats are required to handle all situations. One for Fred out in
the shed with freecell in his head. Fred needs a list of moves that he can
follow line by line as he tries to solve one of the MS 32K (now the MS 1M).
Fred's solution should be limited to Horne's MS moves and autoplay. But a
second format is needed to exchange solutions among automated solvers and
their authors/custodians. This second format will be able to handle any legal
move, will tell the solver which autoplay rules to use, and will indicate how
many cards to move in a sequence from a column to an empty column (at the
very least. It may be easier to indicate how many cards move in all moves).
> <<<<After all, if one were to play Freecell with a "hardware" deck of
> playing cards, one would be moving one card at a time.>>
> <<Please! If you have a single empty freecell and a single empty column,
> surely you would pick up a four-card sequence and transfer it as a group
> from one column to another.>>
> OK, OK. I perhaps should have qualified that comment. An experienced,
> careful player would probably do that. But if one got into that habit and
> got careless about it, it would be very easy to cheat accidentally. One
> could wind up thinking he/she'd solved an impossible deal. The four-card
> move when there is one each empty freecell and column is the "classic"
> everyone remembers, but memorizing all the possible multiple-card
> permissible moves isn't likely. Actually, that might be a reason why
> Freecell lends itself more naturally to computer play than playing-card
> play. Has anyone ever heard of anyone playing Freecell with a deck of
> cards?
Well. It has been tried. Computers make the game so much easier to play. But
mainly I want to avoid silly-looking solutions that have nothing but
single-card moves.
And surely Woods' solver doesn't use eight single-card moves within itself to
represent a four-card sequence move!
> <<You have not described "Solver Evaluation," but SOLUTION evaluation. I
> assume that FCS and FcPro and many more solvers will produce accurate
> solutions. >>
> We happen to be talking about solutions at the moment because of this
> compatibilty problem, but I consider solution evaluation just a subdivision
> of solver evaluation. Solver evaluation also includes speed of range
> solving, absence of false impossibles, size of solution (OK, you could call
> that solution evaluation).
No, you're right. Size of a single solution is solution evaluation. Average
size of solutions is solver evaluation.
Bill Raymond
Received on Mon Dec 10 2001 - 00:22:52 IST