I spent a good number of hours, yesterday, looking online for any rulesets that might make "Beleaguered Castle Solitaire" any better, but failed miserably to find anything.
I did find a number of alternative solitaires that claimed to make the game a little harder, though, so.. Um.. Yeah, ok!!

-=-=-

For a while, I was considering creating a "Stacked Deck" variation, which plays through itself, first, to ensure the deck is solvable.
Ultimately, I reminded myself that the games in the Shoebox (except those in the Extras folder) are supposed to be "IRL Playable", and having a stacked deck isn't really all that plausible without first sitting there and stacking the deck. Maybe with a giant set of possible layouts in front of you.
It'd be slow, and honestly rather silly, to assume you could stack the deck like that.

So.. No.. If in the future I decide it's a requirement, then I might pop back and add those abilities in, but for now I'll be leaving them out.

All my searching, however, did turn up another fun looking Solitaire, and so I spent the rest of the day coding up Golf Solitaire.
The game seems marginally less evil, and I can typically get fairly close to winning, although still haven't quite managed it yet!

Do have a play and let me know how you get on with it.

Today's todo list : Not sure! It's already gone midday, and I've not even finished my blogging, yet!