Games like free cell

FreeCell is a solitaire-based card game played with a 52-card standard deck. It is fundamentally different from most solitaire games in that very few hands are unsolvable. Although software implementations vary, most versions label the hands with a number (derived from the random number seed used to generate the hand).

A version of FreeCell was created by Microsoft for release with the Windows operating system.

Various computer versions of FreeCell occasionally deal unsolvable games.

One of the oldest ancestors of FreeCell is Eight Off. In the June 1968 edition of Scientific American, Martin Gardner described in his "Mathematical Games" column a game by C. L. Baker that is similar to FreeCell, except that cards on the tableau are built by suit rather than by alternate colors. Gardner wrote, "The game was taught to Baker by his father, who in turn learned it from an Englishman during the 1920s." This variant is now called Baker's Game. FreeCell's origins may date back even further to 1945 and a Scandinavian game called Napoleon in St. Helena (not the game Napoleon at St. Helena, also known as Forty Thieves).