"Chris Hogg" <
m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:vt16mat266r8qho11...@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 25 May 2015 11:39:58 +0100, "gareth"
> There are eight unsolvable games apparently: 11,982; 146,692; 186,216;
> 455,889; 495,505; 512,118; 517,776 and 781,948, but they can be solved
> with five free cells rather than four.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FreeCell
Having been presented with 11982 as a challenge by a friend, and tried for
several days without success, I bethought me this morning to google for
it and my gasted was never so flabbered by the number of Internet hits
for that one game alone!
For those of us who are bellringers, I wonder if there might be some
explanation in the mathematics of W.H.Thompson who, about 120
years ago, proved that a peal of Grandsire Triples could not be produced
using common bobs alone, for it seems to me that the swapping of positions
of cards might bear some similarity to the swapping of bells in the changes?