Occasionally the solitaire team includes an extra hint such as:
Keep an eye on 8 of Hearts
What does this hint imply?
Before I answer that question, I will review some basics. The open stack in a Tableau consists of cards of alternating colors and decreasing face value. These stacks are moved around to reveal hidden cards stacked below them. A card is only revealed when the entire stack is moved. Moving a partial stack adds an extra move without revealing a hidden card. In most cases, this results in an extra move.
In certain cases, moving a partial stack results in reduced number of moves. The team includes an extra hint for such cases.
Consider the board shown below.
One might move “9 of Spades” on to “Ten of Hearts”. That is a legal move but moving “8 of Hearts” on to “9 of Clubs” is a better move. To understand the reason, review the following board two moves after the recommended move.
The recommended move made it possible to move “9 of Spades” and “Ten of Spades” on to “Foundation 3” and opened up “2 of Clubs”. After moving “2 of Clubs” and “3 of Clubs” on to “Foundation 2”, and moving the Kings and other higher face value cards down to the Tableaux (Tableaus), the board looks as follows:
The end game is clear from here.
There is another case for which the team includes an extra hint. Cards are mostly moved from a Tableau to a Foundation. On very rare occasions it is worth moving a card back from a Foundation to a Tableau. The team generates an extra hint for this case. Currently I don’t have a good example for this case, but once I do, I will describe it in a followup post.
Thanks for the hint! I’ll use it in the future