Game on (19 Feb)

Okay, now we can be justified in complaining about our bad 76,85,67,75. We got 4 kings in round 3 and round 4 yields only one turn-over in column 3 or column 8 (exercise for the reader!). At this stage, the game is almost certainly lost, and although it is possible to search for the best chance (no matter how slight), I would rather discuss the possibility of winning if 85,78,68,79 was allowed – but only because

• somebody commented on my earlier post, asking if 85,78,68,79 was cheating
• She is the only person to comment on any of my posts, if we ignore the Evil Villain who writes in Russian and is obviously trying to entice me into watching 80,79,82,78,79,71,82,65,80,72,73,67 videos (I’ve had plenty of likes for my silly stories however).

I prefer to play without 85,78,68,79 because the game can almost always be won (just like Freecell). However, I will allow exceptions if the player is very very smart at math and wants to write a paper on Spider. For instance, if we believe the game is rigged then we need to determine the identity of all face-down cards so we can test Random Move algorithms on a particular hand. At the time of writing, Ninja Monkey can only play well at the one-suit level but this time he has learnt a trick or two at the highest difficulty level.

So assuming this game is lost without 85,78,68,79, our new question is: how easy is it to establish the identity of all face down cards with 85,78,68,79?

If you have any experience and use 85,78,68,79 a lot, you would know the power of empty columns. For instance in the start position if you had a “free cell” you are guaranteed 10 turn-overs with 85,78,68,79 even if the starting hand was five Kings and five Aces! That’s a lot better than 1 turn-over without 85,78,68,79.

As a simple exercise for the reader, go back to (i) an earlier post when I had an empty column (ii) my original start position. How many guaranteed turnovers do I get if 85,78,68,79 is allowed?