About Freecell and NetCELL

(For a full list of Frequently Asked Questions, try here.

The original Freecell game was created by Paul Alfille in the mid 1970's. It was written in TUTOR, a programming language specifically designed for the University of Illinois' Plato environment. The original Freecell environment was very rich, featuring variant game parameters, weekly tournaments, and all manner of statistics related to scores. There were large numbers of people who played, and the list of streaks was truly impressive.

Jim Horne and Denny Cronin

Freecell's worldwide popularity, however, is due to the version that Jim Horne wrote as a pet project at Microsoft. It found its way into Windows and the rest shall we say is history.

NetCELL, the online version available here, was written by me, Denny Cronin. I've played Freecell since the early '80s where I encountered Paul's original Freecell game on the Plato system at the University of Illinois. I always admired the game, and missed playing once I no longer had access to a Plato terminal. So I implemented a character-based version of the game for Unix systems sometime in the mid '80s and made this version available in a limited distribution as freeware.

The current NetCELL programs running on your web browser are all new, with one version written in Java, the network-aware programming language from Sun Microsystems, and the other version written in Javascript and DHTML. All moves are stored and score keeping is done back at a server system. The server code is a descendent of my old Unix version and is written in C. It talks via HTTP to large numbers of simultaneous Java and DHTML clients across the net.

You can find out more about Freecell and Freecell history on the Frequently Asked Questions page.

Links for more info about Freecell...

• Freecell.org
  Lots more excellent Freecell links
• Michael Keller's Freecell FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Contains pointers to solutions for all Microsoft Freecell games except the well-known unsolvable 11982.
• The Austega Freecell Challenge - features a list of hard deals, plus tips, tricks, and cheats for Microsoft Freecell.
• Excellent Newspaper Articles on Freecell! The Tallahassee Democrat did some excellent pieces on Freecell which I hope they'll keep online, first and foremost because Paul Alfille, the original creator of Freecell, got some long overdue mention. But you'll also find our humble site mentioned a couple of times replete with quotes from my goofy 12 Step Program stuff.

  It's cheap. It's legal. It's not even fattening. So how bad can an addiction to the computer card game called FreeCell be? - By Kathleen Laufenberg DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

  FreeCell's creator just wanted a little fun, and now he's done - By Kathleen Laufenberg DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

  Oops. It appears these articles have been placed in their archives.
• Salon Magazine on NetCELL
• Freecell for Windows CE
  Microsoft's Entertainment Pack for Windows CE contains a version of Freecell.
• Unsolvable Instance
• Freecell for the Psion
• NetCELL / Freecell History
• Interview with Paul Alfille
• 1998 NetCELL Party Pics