HOOLA(6)

💖 HOOLA(6) — the Freecell Solver board-generation girlies 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the HOOLA manual page, part of the Freecell Solver family of docs 🎀. This is the one about the lil' programs that make the boards before you make the solve. Sit down, grab a boba, we're doing this. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board, make_pysol_freecell_board.py — these are the programs that generate boards so you can feed them into Freecell Solver. Like, they make the deal, and then the solver solves it. Two icons, one job. 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

the Microsoft one:

pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board [-t] board-number

or, for the Python one:

make_pysol_freecell_board.py [-t] [-F] [--ms] board-number [game-string]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so these are command-line programs that generate the initial board of the games from a bunch of popular Solitaire implementations. and then those boards can be piped straight into fc-solve with a pipeline, or dropped into a file if you wanna keep them safe. protect the boards at all costs. 🫶

make_pysol_freecell_board.py also takes an optional third argument which tells it the game variant. this one defaults to Freecell, but it's lowkey useful for generating boards of other games too. heads up though: even if you use that flag, you still gotta use the --game flag of fc-solve if you need it. no skipping steps bestie. 😭

make_pysol_freecell_board.py also takes a flag called -F or --pysolfc that deals the PySolFC boards instead of the classic PySol ones, and another one called --ms or -M that deals Microsoft Freecell / Freecell Pro deals — even for higher seeds. the range. the versatility. obsessed. 👑

a common paradigm for using these programs is something like:

bash:~$ pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board -t 11982 | fc-solve -l gi

if the -t option is specified, then the 10 cards are printed with "T"'s instead of "10"'s. fc-solve will accept either one as input, no cap, but it may prove useful for other solvers or solitaire implementations that don't accept "10"'s. so like, if your other solver is being picky, -t is your girl. 💖

here's a short description of each program:

🧚 make_pysol_freecell_board.py

a Python script that generates the boards of the various games of PySol. she's multilingual, she's flexible, she's giving main character energy. 🌈

👑 pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board

a program that generates the boards of Microsoft Freecell and of the Freecell Pro implementation of Freecell. classic. iconic. periodt. ⭐

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• board-number — the board number, as a decimal number. that's the number of the deal you want, bestie. 🔢
• game-string — a string describing the game. the valid strings and their respective games are:
  • bakers_game — Baker's Game
  • bakers_dozen — Baker's Dozen
  • beleaguered_castle — Beleaguered Castle
  • citadel — Citadel
  • cruel — Cruel
  • der_katz — Der Katzenschwantz
  • die_schlange — Die Schlange
  • eight_off — Eight Off
  • fan — Fan
  • forecell — Forecell
  • freecell — Freecell (the default) 💖
  • good_measure — Good Measure
  • ko_bakers_game — Kings' Only Baker's Game
  • relaxed_freecell — Relaxed Freecell
  • relaxed_seahaven — Relaxed Seahaven Towers
  • seahaven — Seahaven Towers
  • simple_simon — Simple Simon
  • streets_and_alleys — Streets and Alleys

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• fc-solve (6)
• gen-multiple-pysol-layouts (6)
• /usr/share/doc/freecell-solver-FCS_VERSION/board_gen/README

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Shlomi Fish, <http://www.shlomifish.org/> . 💜

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and that's the whole vibe, bestie 🫶 this was Freecell Solver 5.0.0, dated 2025-03-07. go generate some boards, slay some solitaire, and remember: the -t is for the picky ones. mwah. 💋✨