What are the minimum requirements for a good computer version of FreeCell?
The biggest flaw in Microsoft FreeCell is its dialog box which pops up every time you want to move to an empty column, asking if you want to move a single card or a sequence of cards. Moves of single cards to empty columns are very rare (the standard notation allows for this, but there is not a single instance of it in the catalog of over 400 solutions; I do not remember ever doing so when playing MS FreeCell), and can always be done anyway in two steps by moving the single card to a freecell first, then to the empty column. This dialog box was eliminated very early in the development of FreeCell Pro, and most good versions of FreeCell either automatically move the maximum number of cards to an empty column, or use a drag-and-drop interface (though this is not as good an interface for FreeCell; NetCELL, strangely, allows drag-and-drop for single card movement only). Yahoo’s version of FreeCell makes a different mistake — it uses the selection method, but requires the player to select
