FreeCell: Friend or Foe?
If the title of this post does not make you either chuckle or weep, you may not understand the post. However, if you are reading this blog, you are obviously on a computer, and are probably interested in writing and/or web development, and therefore if you say you have not fallen victim to FreeCell Addiction, then I say you are lying.
Let’s face it. We probably need our own 12 Step Program. FreeCell Anonymous: dry-eyed attendees with twitchy mouse fingers and a tendency to huddle around the refreshments table and methodically sort the napkins by color and shape.
However, I am discovering that FreeCell may not be as pernicious as I thought. Or rather, it is pernicious in a useful way.
Let’s just suppose (totally a hypothetical situation here) that you are overwhelmed by development deadlines. (This has never happened to me, thanks to my superior organizational abilities and my absolute refusal to take on too much work. However, my unusual powers of imagination allow me to conjecture.) Suppose this imaginary, less on-top-of-it me were working steadily and reached one of those blockages in which the brain simply stops working. “No,” it says. “In fact, Hell No.”
Here’s the beauty of FreeCell: it’s interesting enough to distract my brain from frustration, boredom, and outright panic. But it’s not so interesting that it sucks me into a black hole of distraction from which it requires a superluminal effort to escape (web surfing, anyone?). After a relatively short while playing FreeCell, my brain says, “Um, this is all well and good, love the FreeCell gig, but could we do something else for a bit?”
And at this point, I am discovering, FreeCell reveals not just its beauty, but its usefulness: FreeCell actually stimulates my brain. It is essentially a puzzle, and development (especially that thrilling stage of development, debugging) is a puzzle, and FreeCell gets the mind working in that way.
It puts me in the mode of analyzing the problem, searching for the different alternatives, thinking through the implications, and then choosing a path. I can only undo one move. And if I get completely stymied, I can roll the whole thing back to my starting point and give it another go.
Also, all FreeCell games can be solved. You might not get it first time around, or even the second or third, but all layouts are solvable if you’re patient. This is a good lesson for the brain to learn.
So, tell me, Gentle Readers. What is your relationship to FreeCell?
Maureen McQ said,
June 22, 2007 @ 8:35 am
I am convinced that if you took FreeCell off my computer, I would cease to function as a writer.
I play other games–Spider Solitaire for example. But nothing has lasted like FreeCell. Alas, since I don’t debug, I can’t claim that it helps me.
I used to keep track of my score. I stopped doing that years ago because it got kind of obsessive.
beth said,
June 22, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
Yeah, I have insane fantasies of creating my own version of FreeCell in Flash, with a more advanced scoring mechanism that tracks your winning streaks across time (whether or not you close the application).
And, you know, the sort of story percolation that goes on when you’re stuck on a story and go play FreeCell for a while is really essentially a kind of creative debugging… what’s wrong with the story, and how do I fix it?
Patti said,
August 10, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
Wow, a Freecell kindred spirit! I thought I was hopelessly addicted to it. But even before I read your post, I also thought that it stimulated my brain in the very ways you acknowledged: problem solving, seeking alternatives, and the great craft of putting things in order. I’m a technical writer and I moonlight in magazine feature writing. Whenever I’m stuck for any reason, I play Freecell until I’m ready to take on the real task at hand. I’m so glad to find out that there are other people who find Freecell useful for the same reasons that I do. Add me to the Freecell Hall of Fame along with the rest of us. Thanks for validating my theory and giving me less cause to feel like an idiot for being hooked on Freecell.
beth said,
August 12, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
A Freecell kindred spirit indeed — we should do a study: The Efficacy of FreeCell in Breaking Through Technical Roadblocks. And if we got stuck, of course, we could play FreeCell!