Well well...

[ffutures]

I just broke Microsoft Spider Solitaire.

The way the game works, you start out with 54 cards on ten piles, and are then dealt ten cards at a time until 104 have been dealt. You get rid of 13 cards at a time, and the aim is to get rid of all the cards. This means that there is a small chance that at the end of the penultimate hand you will only have three cards left, at the end of the previous hand you will only have six cards left, and so forth.

I've played the game at least a couple of times a week over the last 15 years or so and this has never happened; I've generally assumed that it is coded to prevent it. But tonight, for the first time, I ended the penultimate hand with only three cards left. At this point I discovered that it won't deal more cards if any of the ten card spaces are empty... In other words, if you play the game really well you can't win.

Nice one, Microsoft!

Comments

[dandello.livejournal.com]

No, that's just the way it works - the trick is, once you get down to ten cards, you spread them out so you can deal from the pile. (Been there, done that, rarely loose.) *grin*

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Quite. I've always understood that's just "The rules of the game".

[keristor.livejournal.com]

From the help text about playing the game:

"There must be at least one card in each stack before you can deal a new row of cards."

I haven't been caught out by that one for ages, although it did catch me at first. And it always annoys me when I have to break up a run to do it (I have an internal goal of only ever shifting cards to make the piles grow (until they hit a complete flush and get removed, I don't know if that's a possible goal even).

On the 'easy' (one suit) setting I usually complete it. An oddity is that removing too many cards early on makes it harder to finish and a lower score, the ones which look impossible early seem to end up with a higher score.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh, I knew it required that if you had 10 or more cards left, I was expecting that they coded it so that if you had less than 10 it would let you complete the game. Though I will admit that I've always wondered what would happen.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I've assumed that it was intentional, if you get too many 'out' then you also lose (whenever you do it, I had one early on where I still had several deals left but had got fewer than 10 cards on the table and it locked me out).

The only bug I can see is that it doesn't detect that and automatically tell you that you've lost, it just leaves you to quit. But that's true of some other computer solitaire games as well.

(I've tended to play Spider Solitaire before going to bed as a final "wind down" activity...)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

From your description, it seems you're assuming you have to get rid of 13 cards on every turn...? That's definitely not necessary. I've had games where two consecutive turns didn't allow me to ditch any cards, only to then - at last - get the card I desparately needed in the next turn, and then then clear two, three or even four sets in one go.

I discovered the "won't deal if any spaces are empty" rule very early on, trying to cleverly keep one pile as near to empty as possible. (This is still a good strategy, even though you have to end each round with at least oen card in each stack, and thus start each following round with at least *two* in each stack... If you finish a round by tidying things up as much as possible, with a blank space left over, and then move a *king* into it before dealing, that gives you your best chance of emptying that space again early in the next turn.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No, I knew all that - I'd just assumed that they'd either made it non-random enough to prevent a "less than 10 cards" situation, or would have had the sense to build in a special case rule. But this is Microsnot, I should have known better.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The constraint isn't just 'playing well', it's that the last 10 cards also have to be all of the same suit (this is assuming you're playing a regular Spider with four suits, where cards can only be taken out in suit, rather than a simpler form of some kind). Which is a 1 in 4^12 chance. (about one in 4 million). So it genuinely won't happen very often.

If you're playing with fewer than four suits, which I bet you are, I'd recommend moving to four suits. It drastically improves the game.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've been playing the two pack version - on a big monitor the card logos are so teeny I can't readily distinguish clubs from spades or hearts from diamonds, so the four-card version is a pain.