Replay this exact Microsoft-compatible numbered FreeCell deal.
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Deal #11982 is the outlier that became part of FreeCell history. In Microsoft's original set of 32,000 numbered deals, players eventually found winning lines for 31,999. This was the one left behind.
In the 1990s, the Internet FreeCell Project organized players to work through the numbered Microsoft deals. Difficult boards were passed along and retried until almost the entire original collection had been solved. By April 1995, #11982 was the only deal still standing. See how it compares with the rest of the original set in the FreeCell deal difficulty rankings.
That mattered because FreeCell had earned a reputation for being almost completely solvable. Unlike solitaire games with hidden cards, the entire board is visible from move one. When a normal deal goes wrong, the better assumption is usually that a different sequence of moves exists.
The problem is not a lack of legal moves. It is a lack of usable space at the moments when the buried low cards must be reached. Deal #11982 creates a chain of dependencies that standard FreeCell cannot untangle with only four free cells.
Solver analysis shows that the deal becomes solvable with five free cells. With the standard four, the board eventually runs out of the temporary storage needed to make progress.
That is what makes the deal so interesting: it is not wildly different from an ordinary FreeCell board. It is simply balanced on the wrong side of the game's mobility limit.
Try it as a strategy exercise rather than a challenge with a hidden solution. Watch how quickly mobility becomes more important than the number of legal moves. Test different openings, use Undo freely, and notice how promising lines eventually run into the same shortage of working space.
The lesson carries directly into solvable games: preserve free cells, value empty columns, and think about the future positions a move creates—not just whether the move is legal now.
We wrote a deeper history of #11982, including the Internet FreeCell Project, the solver evidence, and the tiny changes that turn this impossible board into a solvable one.