Why am I finding deal number xxxxx difficult when it isn on any of the lists?
Since a large number of people start at deal number 1 and work their way up in sequence, most of the lists of “difficult-to-solve” deals are bottom-heavy, with lots of low-numbered deals. One of the few lists which covers the whole range of 32000 is from Dave Ring’s Internet FreeCell Project, but blocks of 100 were assigned randomly, and a deal may not have been reported as difficult there because the solver who got that block was an expert solver, or just didn’t bother to report which deals he/she found difficult. So a deal may be very difficult even if it doesn’t appear on any of the usual lists. Another point is that difficulty is somewhat subjective — two solvers will not necessarily find the same deals hard. Most lists are compiled by one person or group, and most of those people/groups haven’t tried every deal. There are some obvious things (depth of aces) to look for, but the best way I’ve found so far to objectively measure difficulty is to determine how many freecells are nee
