Talk:Microsoft FreeCell

Mysterious extra game

When I played WIndows xp Freecell, there was an extra game numbered 1000?1 (I don't remember how many zeros, though). It was begun if you lost a game, pressed to enter a new number, closed without entering, clicked a card in the lost game, and said yes when asked to play again. What was the purpose of that game? The article does not say.68.100.116.118 (talk) 00:06, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup

(diff) @Elphion, most of what I removed was either unsourced or sourced unreliably. Rather than reverting wholesale, what parts do you think need discussion? There's also nothing stopping someone from recovering parts from the history in the future. Most of the "Solving" section is undue weight—the article needs more on the game's play and reception. We are a generalist encyclopedia—we don't cover the minutiae of which FreeCell puzzles are unsolvable. czar 05:34, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I categorically disagree that the "Solving" section is undue weight. This is easily the most widespread version of Freecell, and the details of unsolvable games are of interest. It's also not particularly badly sourced. Better sources for some of the refs would be desirable, but those warrant {{better source}}, not deletion. -- Elphion (talk) 05:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

WP is a generalist encyclopedia—the specifics of which handful of games have no solution is the domain of a specialist wiki. All that needs to be covered from the reliable sources mentioned in the previous draft was already accommodated and rewritten in my draft, if you'll take a look. czar 07:50, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

The discussion of unsolvable games (and the identity of the small handful that are unsolvable) are exactly what I would expect to find here, and this sort of thing that makes WP so fascinatingly useful. It would be a different matter if the list ran to, say, thirty or more (in which case a few examples would suffice). I simply don't see the point of removing this material. "Generalist" obviously will mean different things to different people. I find this information of "general" interest. -- Elphion (talk) 13:19, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

The defense of Out of the current Microsoft Windows games, there are eight that are unsolvable: the games numbered 11,982; 146,692; 186,216; 455,889; 495,505; 512,118; 517,776 and 781,948. over Out of the current Microsoft Windows games, eight are unsolvable. proves my point. This type of unnecessary elaboration is discouraged as video game trivia. czar 17:31, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not very experienced with what falls into the scope of "general" interest, but I will still try to contribute. The fact that unsolvable games exist is interesting and worth including. Listing specific game numbers does not seem generally useful or interesting. When I try to picture an audience who would make use of these numbers, I find it very small. The fact that there are unsolvable games is interesting, but exactly which ones seems rather niche. Having the winnable rate seems like spurious information. FishLizardMan (talk) 18:03, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

It might be considered interesting, but do you think that a reader would like up FreeCell because of that? I don't think so. soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 07:40, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly why I came here in the first place: having trouble with a game, I wondered whether it was in fact winnable. -- Elphion (talk) 14:22, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a gameguide, so going to Wikipedia to check those kinds of things isn't the right place. soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 15:28, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

This is not the sort of things covered by "Video Game Guides", but rather independent analysis of the math behind the game. The fact that the analysis was undertaken is noteworthy, the small number of games that are not winnable are also noteworthy (and have been noted by several web sites). -- Elphion (talk) 21:07, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

You looked up FreeCell after you came across one of the unwinnable games. So we should have an entire section on unwinnable games, in the slim chance that someone might have it that too? Regardless, that some games can't be won is not noteworthy for this article: you're saying "noted by several websites", the section has two references. Solitairelaboratory.com and Windows 7 All-in-One for Dummies are not reliable, indepedent sources. soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 07:51, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

I am hardly alone, as the very fact that this material was added to WP as long ago as 2009 attests. And there are many websites discussing this: just google some combination of "Freecell", "12982", and "Dave Ring". Although it's easy to manufacture unwinnable combinations, the fact that the pseudo-random number generator used in FreeCell generates so few unwinable combinations is nothing short of amazing. That, and the -- yes, general -- interest in finding such combinations is notable. This goes well beyond the trivia deprecated as "Video Game Guides". -- Elphion (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2016 (UTC)