# Hint, Auto move and Undo: learning without spoiling the deal

When you are stuck in a Card Lounge solitaire, should you press Hint, lean on Undo, or deal again? Each tool can teach you something, and each can quietly spoil a deal if you use it without thinking. Here is how to get the lesson without giving the game away.

## What each button does

Every solitaire on the site has the same helpers, each with a keyboard shortcut:

- **Hint (H)** highlights one legal move. It does not move anything.
- **Auto move (A)** plays the move the hint would show.
- **Undo (U)** takes back moves, without limit, all the way to the deal.
- **New deal (N)** starts a fresh deal. A round you leave unfinished counts as abandoned.

Notice the exact wording: the hint shows a legal move. Legal is not the same as best. Treat a hint as "here is something you can do", never as "here is what you should do". The same goes for Auto move, which is simply the hint with the click done for you.

Each deal also shows its deal number, so a deal can be replayed. Every mode keeps its own statistics in your browser: rounds played, rounds won, best time and fewest moves for wins. A move is any completed action, including a draw or a recycle of the stock.

## When to ask for a hint

1. **Look first.** Make your own list of legal moves before you touch H.
2. **Press H when your list is empty.** If the hint shows something, ask why you missed it: a colour you misread, a card in a free cell, the top card of the waste.
3. **Do not press H to choose between moves you have already found.** The hint will not judge between them, and choosing is the skill you are practising.

Remember that the game declares a round lost by itself, with "No moves left", once no legal move can change the position. Until that message appears, the round is not over, even if all that is left is to keep drawing.

## Worked example: two red sevens

A [Klondike](../play/klondike.html) Draw 1 deal opens with these top cards in columns 1 to 7: K♠, 4♦, 8♣, 7♥, Q♠, 7♦, 2♣. Before pressing anything, list the tableau moves:

- 4♦ needs a black 5. There is none.
- Q♠ needs a red King. The only King showing is K♠, which is black.
- 2♣ needs a red 3. There is none.
- There are no Aces for the foundations and no empty column.
- 7♥ can go on 8♣, and so can 7♦. Only one of them can, because the 8♣ is covered afterwards.

So there are exactly two tableau moves, plus drawing from the stock. A hint would highlight a legal move, but it cannot tell you which seven is better. That decision is yours.

Think it through. In a fresh Klondike deal, column 4 has 3 face-down cards under its 7♥ and column 6 has 5 under its 7♦. Either move turns over a card. A common preference is to open the column with more hidden cards, because those are the hardest to reach later, so play 7♦ onto 8♣. Suppose the card turned over in column 6 is 6♠. It goes straight onto the 7♦ (black 6 on red 7), and column 6 turns over another card. Column 3 now reads 8♣, 7♦, 6♠ over its two face-down cards, and column 6 has 3 face-down cards left.

Now suppose you undo both moves to "try the other seven instead". You already know the 6♠ is under the 7♦, and you cannot forget it. The deal is partly spoiled.

A fair rule for yourself: undo freely when a move revealed nothing new, such as a misclick, but think twice before undoing a move that turned a card over. For more on this opening, read [Klondike: your first moves](klondike-first-moves.html).

## Replaying a deal and reviewing a loss

When a round ends with "No moves left", do not rush into the next deal. Use it:

1. **Write down the deal number** before you leave the round.
2. **Find the moment it went wrong.** Which cards stayed face down? Which card did you need, and where was it hiding?
3. **Replay the same deal number later** and try a different line at the point you suspect.
4. **Count your moves.** Fewest moves for a win is kept for each mode, so a cleaner winning line can show up in your statistics.

Be honest about one thing: a replayed deal is a puzzle you have already partly seen, so a win on it is practice, not a fresh result. FreeCell suits this especially well, because all 52 cards are face up from the start and its deals use the classic numbering from 1 to 32000; see [FreeCell deal numbers](freecell-deal-numbers.html).

## Try it

Open [Klondike](../play/klondike.html), deal a fresh round and note its deal number.

1. Play without Hint or Auto move until you are stuck or the game says "No moves left".
2. Replay the same deal number, and press H only at the point where you got stuck the first time.
3. Ask whether the hint showed a move you had missed, or simply confirmed that you had run out of useful moves.

As a warm-up, check the worked example yourself: with K♠, 4♦, 8♣, 7♥, Q♠, 7♦, 2♣ showing, are there really only two tableau moves? (Yes: either red seven onto the 8♣.)

The same habits work in [FreeCell](../play/freecell.html) and [Spider](../play/spider-one-suit.html). For broader advice, see [strategy](../strategy.html), and the full rules are on [how to play](../how-to-play.html).