What is Ephemeral FreeCell?
Another idea I had is to play with freecells that vanish after one use; I call this version Ephemeral FreeCell. This has not been investigated much, but should work particularly well with wider tableaux. For example, what is the win rate of FreeCell if you deal 13 columns of four cards, but have only one freecell which disappears when you move a card out of it? There is lots of scope for experimentation with combinations of permanent and ephemeral freecells (you could also prefill all or some of the permanent ones). This feature will be available in the Solitaire Virtuoso program which should appear some time in 2011; this program is planned as a replacement for FreeCell Pro. Charlotte Morrison pointed out to me that the idea of one-use freecells appears in the Pogo game Rainy Day Spider Solitaire; it has also appeared subsequently in other casual/adventure solitaires, such as Mystery Solitaire: Secret Island. Not only does adding ephemeral freecells greatly increase the number of comb
