Part 8: Solitaire: Please Enjoy a Game

Jie’s daughter is a game whiz.



I’ve been playing this for three hours now.

[ ~ ]

OK, in the interest of getting something useful done with my time, I figure I might explain the rules of Jie’s daughter’s game, and maybe a bit of strategy to go with it.


The Goal

First off: The goal is to get all the cards up to the spaces in the top. You can move cards that aren’t buried under anything, as well as stacks that are built down in alternating colors (like Solitaire).

The three cells in the top left are ‘free’ and any card can be moved there (though they’ll be used to stack the Dragons by the end of the game - see below). The flower card will fly into the top center as soon as it’s movable. And the number cards go into the three slots on the top right, sorted by color and in numerical order.


Number Cards



You can move a number card:
• Onto free cells
• Onto a card of the next number up (but not of the same color) to make a stack - you can repeat this to build up a big stack all the way up to 9.
• Onto a blank cell on the table
• Onto their spot in the top right if the previous number card of the same color is already there (this will happen automatically a lot)

You can move a stack of number cards in the same way, except it can’t go in a free cell or the top right (except one card at a time). It’s possible to move just part of a stack around, as long as you have somewhere you can set it down.

If you unearth a ‘1’ card, it will automatically fly up to a spot on the top right (as will a ‘2’ if the ‘1’ of the same color is already there.)
Cards of higher values will only automatically move to the top right if all the cards of the previous number are there already (so a 5 will only move there if all three 4s are present, for example).

You can also move a number cards to the top right manually if it qualifies to be there but the game hasn’t auto-moved it yet. Once you do this with a card, it can’t be moved back, so this is mostly an advanced strategic move.


The Dragons



‘Dragons’ are the cards with the large symbol on it. There’s four of each.

You can move the dragons:
• Onto free cells
• Onto a blank cell on the table
…and that’s it. As you might imagine, Dragons are going to be generally annoying to deal with

If all four of a Dragon are unburied (movable), you can push the button with the associated symbol (near the top center) to send those four Dragons to one of the free cells, permanently. This will lock that free cell for the rest of the game, but that’s usually an OK tradeoff.

You do need at least one free cell that is either {A} empty, or {B} has one of the Dragons you’re trying to clear away already in it, for this to work.


Strategy

Like a lot of solitaire games, this game has a ‘tipping point’ after which winning becomes pretty trivial. The trick is not getting stuck along the way.

When the game starts, you have two major goals to accomplish in the early to medium part of the game:

• Get the number cards 1-3 for each color up to the top right. This is your primary priority.
• Get one set (or more) of the Dragons out of the way. You’ll probably have to do this to accomplish the first goal.

Take a look at the tableau before you make any moves - try to see where the 1s, 2s, and 3s are, how buried they are, and how many cards you’ll need to move to get to them. Also note where the Dragons are. If any set of Dragons is near the top of the table piles, it might be worth trying to remove that set early - the same goes for if a particular set of Dragons is blocking access to a lot of 1-3s (though this might be harder depending on how far those Dragons are towards the bottom).

Once you start moving, building is your friend - but be careful if you build on piles that have a 1, 2, or 3 buried underneath them. Try to have an idea of what your plan is for moving your stack off the pile later so you can get at the number cards you’re going for.

It’s a good idea not to move Dragons willy-nilly if you don’t immediately have to get at what’s under them. An easy way to lose a game is to have Dragons locking up most of the piles and no valid moves. Removing a set of 4 Dragons from the board is almost always a good thing, though, especially if it leads to freeing a blank spot on the table.
You’ll do best if you plan which Dragons you’ll remove first and just how you’re going to get there - and in particular, you might want to favor moving number cards to free cells over Dragons, as the number card can be easier to get out later.

Once you have the 1-3s sorted out, your job becomes a lot easier - if you haven’t made a serious attempt at removing Dragons before, you should see if you can easily take out any sets now. Building stacks and moving number cards to the top right should be a lot easier as well.

Good luck!





I should probably learn to read Chinese at some point. Right now I’m stuck with cruddy machine translation. Or David.

That said: Poor Joe.




P.S.: Might as well respond to a few replies while I have the time…



@Aesculus - Thanks for the tip! I’ll have to check out a Pizza Hut here sometime.


@Solumin - Tell you what: you don’t tell Jie, and I won’t tell Jie.


@Ibblebibble, also @klafbang - Alas, no. MCs use only integer math, from -999 to 999. Any value that would overflow or underflow will get capped at the most appropriate of those two values, so the idea to use modulo arithmetic doesn’t work… I think.



@Tenebrais - Well said!


P.P.S: Jie said something about his daughter planning to submit the game to an app store or two…