A freecell solver implemented using A* search algorithm.

Make sure you have the following already installed on your machine:

• .net 5 or later SDK
• npm cli. This is used for the visualizer.

Run the following command in the terminal:

dotnet tool restore

Then run the following to execute the build:

dotnet cake

Once built, you can solve any MS Freecell deal # with the following command:

./dist/release/fc-solve run -d 1

or run directly using dotnet run without building:

cd src
dotnet run -c release -- run -d 1

The output will be something like this:

Processing deal #1
Solver: A* - using 16 cores
Done in 00:00:00.0334143 - initial id: 12 - visited nodes: 2,181 - #moves: 97
moves: 4a41{1}4b4c4h40{1}64{1}76{1}a774{2}37{1}63{2}6a6h2h71{2}2d20{1}50{1}50{1}5h0h5h7h7hbh56{1}7h05{4}27{1}23{1}d21h01{1}43{3}a404{1}0h0h4h37{4}30{3}13{4}1a21{2}a220{2}c212{3}1h50{5}15{1}1a1h0h4h0h0h7ha431{5}34{1}35{1}3h0h1h7h0h1h0h1h2h2h13{2}61{2}6h7h0h3h7h0h2h3h7h0h2h3h4h02{2}0h1h2h5h1h2h4h5h

• 01234567 represent columns indices. i.e. 40{3}: move top 3 cards from tableau 4 to tableau 0
• abcd represent reserve/freecells slots. i.e. 6a: move top card from tableau 6 to reserve
• h represent foundation. i.e. 7h: move top card from tableau 7 to foundation
• {n} represent a move size of n

Use the -d <n> to specify which deal number to solve. For example, to solve deal #200:

./dist/release/fc-solve run -d 200

You can ask the solver to output solution visualization using the -v <PATH>, this will output an html file:

./dist/release/fc-solve run -d 1 -v "./path-to-html"

Use -h to list all possible commands and options.

The following resources and open source projects were a huge help in building this solver:

• https://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~sipper/publications/freecell.pdf
• https://github.com/macroxue/freecell/
• https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve
• https://github.com/heineman/algorithms-nutshell-2ed

Resources and open source projects used for visualizer:

• https://animejs.com/
• https://fontawesome.com/