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Tutorial Stage 3
If you have completed stage 2 of the tutorial this is what you should see now. (If you followed my advice about that Three of Clubs)
I'll be leaving the moves up to you soon, but there is still one type of move we haven't tried. First move the Queen of Diamonds onto the King of Clubs and then move the revealed Ace of Diamonds to an empty Home Cell.
It would be good now to move the Queen of Clubs, Jack of Diamonds, and Ten of Spades in Column 2 onto the King of Diamonds. We could do this one card at a time, using the Free Cells to store the Ten and the Jack during the move. Fortunately Freecell3D will let you move a number of cards at once as long as the cards are in the correct order and there are enough Free Cells so that you could have done it one card at a time.
Click on the exposed part of the Queen of Clubs and drag the three cards onto the King of Diamonds (make sure the mouse cursor is over the King when you release the mouse button). It's done, and it saved you from moving each card separately. It's not cheating, just time saving.
Well, you're almost on your own now, but here are a few tips to help you through the rest of the game.
The Solver
If you get stuck then you can ask Freecell3D to suggest some moves. On the Solver menu (on both the Game and Moves windows) select Suggest. In the pop-up window enter the number of moves you would like Freecell3D to suggest and click the Suggest button. Freecell3D will calculate a solution to the game and perform the number of moves you have requested. If it finds the game cannot be solved it will tell you instead. If the moves happen too quickly then you can look at what happened in the Moves window. (You can also control how fast the moves happen - see changing the move rate.
Interestingly, sometimes if you ask Freecell3D to suggest a single move, and then immediately ask it again, it will do the reverse of the move it has just done. This is because it looks at each game position anew before it suggests, and it might decide that the change it made previously has altered the best solution. If this is happening, just ask Freecell to suggest two moves at once rather than two suggestions of one move.
If everything looks desperate, but you don't want Freecell3D to help you, then you can ask if the game is solvable from the current position. Just select Check Out on the Solver menu. It will tell you the number of moves it has managed to complete the game in if it is solvable. Otherwise it will tell you that the game cannot be solved. You can use this feature right at the start of the game if you want and then try to get as close as possible to the number of moves that Freecell3D has solved it in.
Alternatively, just select Solve on the Solver menu and sit back an let Freecell3D do all the work. You can click the Abort button at any time and take over. Remember you can control the move rate if is too fast or too slow.
Auto Finish
If Auto Finish is enabled in the options then Freecell3D continually monitors the card positions, looking for a time when to finish the game requires no further skill. This is when all the cards are arranged in descending suit and alternating color in the columns. At this point you cannot go wrong. The Auto Finish button on the toolbar will enable:
Note: if Auto Move to Home Cell is enabled then Auto Finish is not used or needed as the computer will automatically take over control at this point.
This means you can click the button and watch Freecell3D finish the game for you. This is not cheating - you have supplied the brains and Freecell3D is just doing the last bit of hard work for you. Sit back and enjoy!
This is the end of the tutorial.
Back to Introducing Freecell3D