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Solitaire is a game that precedes its computer version, and that means that all the cards are truly shuffled, without the computer peeking in to verify the game is solvable. And like McKay mentioned, with a random shuffle you can definitely end up with an unsolvable game. I'm sure it is possible to design a Solitaire variant in which each game is solvable, ...

It sounds like you're describing One-Handed Solitaire, or a variant of it. Here's a second description of the rules. It's actually possible to play several solitaire games in this way, where you use the top of the deck as a kind of compressed tableau, and store the discards in the draw deck itself.

Literally just played a game in which one of the stacks (the one containing 4 cards) was lead by the 9 of diamonds, and the cards inside of it were the King of Spades, the 5 of diamonds, the 10 of spades, and the 10 of clubs (I know this because I had the entire field solved except for this stack and used process of elimination). As far as I can see this ...

No. Eric Sink decided that he would start a micro-ISV to create a version of solitaire that is always winnable. This was mostly just an experiment to see what it would be like running a software company with one person, but he eventually sold the product which is still available for purchase. There have been some estimates about the number of Klondike ...

However, if you started a list and enumerated the initial conditions -- I feel like I've seen this on a linux version of Solitare: the numbering of deck order, that is -- and you definitively decide a certain one is un-winnable, you then could compare notes across nodes (share with friends) and VOILA: a list of un-winnable starting deck stacks. I've been ...

No. Klondike solitaire traditonally requires that you deal yourself three cards, and can only play the "top" card from that deal. Once you play the top card, the card below becomes available. If Microsoft removed the three card restriction,there wouldn't be much of a game left. At that point, the game would devolve into discovering if a required card was ...

The way rummy figures in doesn't seem very clear from your description. It sounds similar to Pounce; in that game you have a personal tableau, common piles of cards that you're building on, and a bunch of cards you hold--although it's a stack, not a hand. If you remember the objective of your game, that would be helpful.

OK, so I finally figured it out and for the record, here is what I found works well. If you can stack cards descending by suit, do that but if it isn't possible and you have to stack on a different suit, make sure that there aren't any cards of the same suit that are of a LOWER value beneath them. That way you can ensure you aren't locking up that suit in ...