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This program was written in response to a request from my son: "Can you 
complete the game of SOLITAIRE dad?". When I was much younger I used to 
be able to solve the game using a stock solution, but I could no longer 
remember this. So I spent a short while writing a program to do it for 
me.

The program is VERY slow, it takes 26 hours to find the first solution. 
In order to help with this it has the following features.

The 'D' key toggles the display on and off, the program runs faster if 
there is no  need to display the results.

The 'S' key stops the program.









As a solution is found the program saves it in a file SOLn where n is 
the solution number.

Moves are displayed in two different ways, firstly in a pictorial 
fashion and secondly using a co-ordinate scheme. The moves displayed in 
the co-ordinate scheme provide the following information:







The program is not elegant and there is lots of scope for improvement,  
but it works.

I have included two sample solutions that may be loaded up, these are 
Z087C (originally SOL1) and Z087D (originally SOL20).

John Crouchley
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Then if 'S' is pressed again the current position is saved 
in a file called "SOL", the program then continues.

If 'L' is pressed then the program allows you to type in 
the name of a file to load, this file is loaded and it's 
moves displayed, then 'S' can be pressed to save the state 
and continue.








a) The current move number (maximum of 31 owing to the 
number of pieces)
b) The 'y' coordinate of the piece to be moved
c) The 'x' coordinate of the piece to be moved d) the 
direction of movement.

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