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Losing at FreeCell
July 09, 2005
Last night I blew a 34-game FreeCell streak. I was violating one of my cardinal streak-enhancing rules, which is never to play FreeCell when rushed, tired, or tipsy. As streaks go, 34 isn't exactly stupendous; still, I was almost a third of the way to my personal best of 105 (and I've got the printout of a captured statistics screen to prove it ), and playing one last game while waiting for my dial-up to dial up was not a good idea.
Some time back I discovered by accident how to abort a losing game before it shows up in the loss column. Last night I was, once again, sorely tempted, but I get queasy looking in the mirror and seeing the face of a woman who cheats at solitaire. Instead I called up Statistics, noted with regret those 34 wins marred by 1 loss, and bravely hit "Clear." The caution message appeared: "Are you sure you want to delete all statistics?" How kind of it not to ask why I wanted to delete all statistics -- "wassa matta, you lose or something?" I hit "Yes."
How does one abort a losing game before it shows up in the loss column, you ask? What? I should teach the world to cheat? Well, OK, I will give you a hint: I'm still living with Windows 98se, and Windows 98se is a somewhat crash-happy OS. Not all abrupt exits are crash-related. More than that I will not tell; I don't want to have to cover my mirrors.
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