Saturday 16th September 2023 - A Day Of Infamy!
Let me explain ....
Microsoft Solitaire Collection is a series of games you can play on your desktop, lappy, whatever based around 5 versions of solitaire card games. It's been going for over 20 years.
They run Daily Events (where you're up against other punters - these regularly attract up to 1/2 a million participants worldwide) and Daily Challenges where they set you 5 puzzles to solve on your own - complete every challenge for a month and you get a Gold Star! Whoopi-do!
So I've been doing the Daily Challenges for a bit of gentle mental stimulation for a few years now. Yesterday, I completed four of the five and the fifth was a "Tri-Peaks" puzzle, ranked "Easy". Usually takes me between one and two minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, I'm still working at it. Something ain't right.
I dissect it forensically and conclude "Easy? I'm not sure this is actually solvable ..."
Google it up. There are websites which produce cheat-sheet solutions. The one I look at brands it "Unsolvable, I think".
Look on the Microsoft Solitaire Collection Facebook Page.
All Hell has broken loose ....
Many punters have been doing these games for many years and have unbroken Gold Stars stretching back to 2010 and before .....
An Unsolvable Puzzle? This has never happened before.
There is disbelief
. There is crying
. There is wailing. There are demands for Zuckerberg to be dragged from his bed and frogmarched into the office to put it right
. There are calls for the Board of Directors to be fired, urgent questions asked in Parliament and the Senate, marches on Silicon Valley
, blockades ... people gluing themselves to their computers
....
If you think Russell Brand's got problems, well ...
And all because some techie-nerd somewhere has pressed the wrong button and set the puzzle incorrectly. Own up, Suff