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Dealia

predict before you look

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01 Opening
Dealia beat 1 of 5

At the back of the Card Lab, under a lamp that hums a little, there is a long wooden table covered in face-down cards. Behind the table sits Dealia, a raccoon in a lab coat that is slightly too big for her. Her striped tail curls around the leg of her stool. Her paws never stop moving: shuffling, cutting, fanning the cards out and sweeping them back together.

Dealia is the mentor of the lab, and she has one question she asks before anything else. You will hear it the moment you sit down.

"What do you think will happen?"

02 Dealia
Dealia beat 2 of 5

One rainy afternoon a young porcupine named Rowan came in with a plan, quills bristling with excitement. Rowan had played a lot of solitaire, the kind where you build long stacks down the table and only a King is allowed into an empty column. Rowan had a new rule in mind.

"What if ANY card could go into an empty column?" Rowan said. "I bet you'd win way more games. Like, twice as many."

Dealia's paws stopped. Her eyebrow went up. "Twice as many," she said. "Good. Write it down."

Rowan blinked. "Why? We're about to find out anyway."

03 Dealia
Dealia beat 3 of 5

"That's exactly why," Dealia said, and slid a small card and a pencil across the table. "If you write your guess after you see the answer, your memory will quietly move the guess closer to the answer. Everybody's does. Mine too. So we write first. Then the lab can surprise you, and a surprise is where the learning lives."

Rowan wrote it: Twice as many wins. Dealia tucked the card under a heavy brass paperweight shaped like a raccoon paw.

Then the lab went to work. The solver in the corner is a patient machine that plays each deal out and never pretends. It played the same stack of deals twice, once with the Kings-only rule and once with Rowan's any-card rule. The results came back on a strip of paper.

More wins with the new rule. But not twice as many. Nowhere near.

Rowan's ears went hot. "Oh," Rowan said quietly. "I was way off."

04 Dealia
Dealia beat 4 of 5

This is the moment Dealia is best at. She did not say never mind. She did not say that's okay, it was a hard one in the voice people use when something is not okay. She leaned forward, eyes bright, and she looked delighted.

"Way off is wonderful," she said. "Now we get to ask the best question in the whole lab: why did you think it would be twice? What did your head picture?"

Rowan thought. "I pictured getting stuck. When I play, I get stuck with an empty column and no King to put in it. So I figured if any card could go there, I'd never be stuck."

"And?" said Dealia.

"And... maybe I get stuck in other ways too. Buried cards. Stacks in the wrong order. The empty column isn't the only place you can get stuck."

05 Closing
Dealia beat 5 of 5

Dealia clapped her paws together, once. "That is a real scientist's thought. Your guess was wrong, and because you wrote it down, you found out which part of your picture was wrong. Nobody could have told you that. You found it yourself."

Rowan looked at the little card under the paperweight. It didn't feel embarrassing anymore. It felt like a map with one road marked not this way.

Dealia feels most like Dealia in that second right after the paper strip comes out, before anyone has read it. The room goes still. Every guess in the room is written down and waiting. Anything could happen. It is a fizzy, tip-of-the-toes feeling, like standing at the top of a slide, and she has never once gotten tired of it.

You have a bit of Dealia in you. Maybe you already guess before you look, or maybe you'll start today. Either way, remember her one question, and say it the way she does: "Dealia says: guess it, write it, THEN look."

Then deal the cards. Whatever they say, you'll have learned something.

Hear it as an audio drama

A short play starring Dealia, from Solitaire Lab. Different voices, same idea. Listen any time after you read.

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Read the drama script
  1. Narrator: From Spark and Anvil and Solitaire Lab — this is Dealia, in chapter 1 of the Solitaire Lab cast.
  2. Narrator: This drama uses an AI-generated voice. Voiced via Gemini 2.5.
  3. Narrator: At the back of the Card Lab, Dealia the raccoon shuffled cards without ever stopping.
  4. Rowan: Dealia, what if any card could go into an empty column? I bet we'd win twice as many games!
  5. Dealia: Twice as many. Good. Write it down.
  6. Rowan: Why? We're about to find out.
  7. Dealia: That's exactly why. Once you see an answer, memory quietly moves your guess closer to it. So we write first, and a surprise stays a surprise.
  8. Narrator: Rowan wrote the guess and tucked it under a brass paperweight. The solver played the same deals under both rules.
  9. Rowan: More wins. But nowhere near twice as many. I was way off.
  10. Dealia: Way off is wonderful! Now, why did you think it would be twice?
  11. Rowan: I only pictured getting stuck with an empty column. But I get stuck other ways too.
  12. Dealia: You just found the part of your picture that was wrong. Nobody could have handed you that.
  13. Narrator: Guess it, write it, then look. That's Dealia's whole idea.
  14. Narrator: You've been listening to a Spark and Anvil chapter, written by the Spark and Anvil writing team for ages 9 to 14.
  15. Narrator: Apps stay free forever.
  16. Narrator: Curriculum aligned to Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
  17. Narrator: Released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 for educational reuse. Visit Spark and Anvil for the full transcript.

The Solitaire Lab ensemble

Dealia is one of the friends in Solitaire Lab. Each friend shows you one idea by how they act; meet them all and you have the whole subject.

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