Some time ago I played with a Spider Solitaire app for iPhone. And I have to say its features are more bewildering than the infamous “At first condemn our very feeble excuse for everything that follows constant negative press (7)” tweet from 2017 US politics.
Earlier this year I could load the program and deal a hand. Unfortunately I couldn’t see any cards! I eventually decided to update all my apps, but only because Gmail also needed an upgrade for some reason. A few days ago I played my first game and lost narrowly. On the very next game this happened:
(Text version):
Suits removed: Diamonds, Spades
Stock: 0 cards remaining
Column 1: Ks
Column 2:
Column 3: Kh,Qh,Jh,Th,9h,8h,7d,6d,5d,,4c,3c,2c,Ad,8d,7c,6c,5c,4c,3c,2c,Ac
Column 4:
Column 5: 6h,5h,4h,3d,2d,As,2s,Ah,7c,6s
Column 6: ?,8c,Qd,Jd,Tc,9d,8s,7s,6c,5s,4s,3s,2h,Ah,9c,Kh,Qh,Js,Td,9s
Column 7: Kc,Qc,Jc,4d,7h
Column 8:
Column 9: ?,Kd,Qc,Jc,Tc,9c,8c,5h,4h,3h,2h,Ac
Column 10: Kc,Qs,Jh,Ts,9h,8h,7h,6h,5c
Ummm … excuse me? Do I not even get a chance to turn over the last card in Column 9? Like I said, this is more bewildering than the infamous “At first condemn our very feeble excuse for everything that follows constant negative press (7)” tweet from 2017 US politics. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
At the risk of insulting the intelligence of Captain Obvious, I have removed two suits and obtained three empty columns. I know from experience this does not automatically guarantee victory (especially if you are playing a certain server). But this game state is not even close to being one of the exceptions. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to verify the game is mathematically won regardless of the permutation of unseen cards.
Not every Spider Solitaire player has above average IQ and all game developers must cater to the whole market instead of a single expert player – yes, I get that. But whoever wrote this software doesn’t understand the fundamentals of the game. Therefore I am deleting this app.
The good news is Humanity has not (yet) been completely surpassed by its Artificial Intelligence counterpart. While I cannot pretend to understand the detailed game-theoretic specificity of AlphaGo’s Move 37 against Lee Sedol I can still sleep at night knowing AI has some catching up to do when it comes to playing Spider Solitaire.
Out of curiosity I clicked the magic button to see what would happen. The app yanked a full set of clubs from various columns and moved that to the foundations. I’m not sure how this esoteric piece of knowledge will help me in future, but I guess knowing this fact can’t hurt either.
Just In Case You’re Really Bored: can you win the above game with only two empty columns instead of three?
Just In Case You’re Really Really Bored: can you win the above game with only ONE empty column instead of three?
Just In Case You’re Really Really Really Bored: Write a 5000 word essay explaining why move 37 at P10 is more awesome than my attempt to “improve” Grant Woolard’s Classical Music Mashup IV.
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
“whoever wrote this software doesn’t understand the fundamentals of the game.” That may be true. I’ll offer a somewhat more benign explanation. It’s a bug. A software bug. A really, really embarrassing bug. Deleting the app still sounds like an entirely appropriate thing to do. But even decent programmers let really, really bad bugs through sometimes. At least that’s the way it was 20 years ago.
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I agree it may be a bug. I can’t claim to be a professional programmer since I am more of a mathematician. Come to think of it, today’s environment encourages programmers and software developers to focus on speed rather than accuracy compared to 20 years ago. Put enough pressure on Joe Bloggs The Expert and he will look like a beginner once in a while.
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