Casey's Solitaire
System Requirements and Installation
For Macintosh:
Casey's Solitaire requires Mac OS 7.1 or higher, a 68030 CPU or better, or a PowerMac (PPC). The game requires a minimum of 2500 megabytes of RAM and a little under 2.5 megabytes of disk space (size will vary depending on whether you have downloaded the 68K version or the PPC version.) Also required is a color monitor with 256 colors or more (thousands or millions of colors recommended.) Casey's Solitaire runs fine under OS 9.
To install, unstuff the file with StuffIt Expander and drag the resulting folder to any convenient location on your hard drive.
SOME HINTS FOR PLAYING CASEY'S SOLITAIRE
Full instructions for playing Casey's Solitaire can be found under the Help menu within the game.
At first blush, it may look like Casey's Solitaire is all luck and no skill, but there are actually some things you can do to improve your odds of winning. You will probably develop your own strategies after a while, but here are some general rules that can tip the odds in your favor.
1. Remember: suit doesn't matter. You only need to concentrate on a card's numerical value.
2. If you have a choice between playing a card off the deck or playing off a talon, always play off the talon.
3. If you have to cover a lower-numbered card with a higher-numbered card on a talon, remember which talon the buried card is in and always play off that talon first whenever possible. You will often be able to move the higher card onto a foundation shortly afterward, which uncovers the lower card under it.
4. Take advantage of the ability to peek at the second card in a talon pile by moving the top card away a short distance and then letting it snap back into place. You can often find "buried" low-numbered cards this way, and uncover them. This trick is especially handy near the end of a game when there are only a few unplayed cards left and you need to make sure you play them in the right order.
5. Use the preference setting that lays out all the aces during the deal. This isn't cheating and it does improve your odds a bit. If you also use the preference that deals out only face cards to the talon piles, you can improve your odds of winning to about 33%, which makes a very satisfying game. (If you additionally use the preference that puts all face cards at the top of the deck, you can win as much as 90% of the time, but that's full-bore cheating and it'll cost you 20 points.)
6. If at least one King is not dealt to the bottom of a talon pile during the initial deal, the game is not winnable. Two Kings dealt are much better, and the more Kings at the bottom of the talons, the easier it is to win. There is no penalty for re-dealing the cards as long as you haven't played any cards yet, so feel free to reshuffle the deck as many times as necessary to get a good, playable hand. If the intial deal also lays out an ace or two on the foundations, it's a great hand -- go for it.
7. It sometimes works to place as many face cards as possible onto a single talon pile, or onto a couple of talons piles, throughout the game play. The author generally designates a talon with a King at the bottom to be the "face card pile". Separating out the high cards (we include "10s" with these) into their own pile increases the odds that they won't have to be played on top of a lower card somewhere else. This strategy isn't always possible, but it seems to be a good general rule.
8. If you happen to be playing with Casey out of his cage and you don't remember where a particular card has gotten buried, sometimes Casey will reveal it for you. It's pure chance, but it does happen. Casey tugs cards out of their piles only while you are actively playing (parrots, after all, only like to do what you're doing.) If you stop moving, so does he. You can encourage Casey to tug out more cards by repeatedly jiggling the top card of one of the piles (you don't have to actually play the card, just move it a bit and let it snap back into place.) The more cards you snap, the more cards he hauls out, and he just may pull out a card you were trying to find. Be sure to push the card back into the talon before it moves too far, or you will lose access to the pile.
If you have comments or suggestions about Casey's Solitaire, we'd love to hear them. Casey's Solitaire is free for private use. That means you can play it and distribute it to your friends, but HyperActive Software owns the copyright and all related rights. If you would like to publish Casey's Solitaire on a disk or CD collection, please contact us.
Casey's Solitaire is Copyright ©2000 by HyperActive Software and Jacqueline Landman Gay. All rights reserved. Casey's Solitaire is free for personal use. Contact HyperActive Software for any other use, such as inclusion in a software collection or compilation CD. Casey's Solitaire was created using MetaCard(TM), a cross-platform development tool from MetaCard Corporation.