Simple Simon is a
patience
(or forbearance) is the ability to endure difficult circumstances. Patience may involve perseverance in the face of delay; tolerance of provocation without responding in disrespect/anger; or forbearance when under strain, especially when face ...
or
solitaire
Solitaire is any tabletop game which one can play by oneself, usually with cards, but also with dominoes. The term "solitaire" is also used for single-player games of concentration and skill using a set layout tiles, pegs or stones. These gam ...
card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific.
Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card g ...
played with a regular 52 cards deck (4 suits of 13 cards each without Jokers). It is a close relative of the well-known
Spider Solitaire
Spider is a type of Patience (game), patience game, and is one of the more popular two-deck solitaire games. The game originates in 1949, and its name comes from a spider's eight legs, referencing the eight foundation piles that must be filled t ...
. It became somewhat popular being featured in some computerized collections of Solitaire card games, but its origins possibly predate its implementation as a computerized game.
Rules
At the beginning of the play the cards are dealt all facing the player, starting from 3 columns of 8 cards each, and then 7 columns with 7, 6, and so forth cards until 1.
A card can be placed on any card on the top of a column whose rank is greater
than it by one (with no cards that can be placed above an Ace). A sequence of
cards, decrementing in rank and of the same suit, can be moved as one. An
empty column can be filled by any card. A sequence of cards from the king down to
the Ace - all of the same suit - can be moved to the foundations. The object of
the game is to place all four suits in the foundations.
Strategy
A mixed-suit sequence of cards can be moved to a different location, given
enough empty columns or parent cards to place intermediate components and
sub-sequences of cards on. This is similar to
FreeCell only with the
individual components of the sequence being the same-suit sub-sequences
rather than individual cards as in FreeCell. Note that some implementations
of Simple Simon, require the player to do all the moving of the individual
components by himself.
Statistics and analysis
In September 2001, Shlomi Fish adapted Freecell Solver, an automated solver for various solitaire card games, to solve Simple Simon. The statistics presented by the solver when run over a range of 4000 random games showed that about 85% of the games were solvable. Another programmer added another type of move which reportedly increased the percentage of games that were solvable by the solver
to well over 90%.
In 2009 a more up-to-date version of Freecell Solver produced the result that the solver was able to solve 4,533 (or 90%) of the deals, and generally reached a conclusion within 100 moves. The comment has been made that this is "what makes the game a joy: either it's impossible to solve and you see it in the first moves or it's solvable and you only have to find the best route."
References
See also
*
Spider Solitaire
Spider is a type of Patience (game), patience game, and is one of the more popular two-deck solitaire games. The game originates in 1949, and its name comes from a spider's eight legs, referencing the eight foundation piles that must be filled t ...
*
List of solitaire games
*
Glossary of solitaire terms
Games of patience, or (card) solitaires as they are usually called in North America, have their own 'language' of specialised terms such as "building down", "packing", "foundations", "talon" and "tableau". Once learnt they are helpful in de ...
{{Solitaire
Patience video games
Spider patience card games
Single-deck patience card games
Year of introduction missing