Revisiting the Mutilated Chessboard
For dealing out the cards, it seems that the only thing that would stop you from drawing a straight via one card from each pile would be if any one pile had one card in all 4 suits, along with one of its adjacent cards in the straight; e.g. 4 of hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades, and any 5 or 3. (If you pluck off all the same-suited cards first, then you&#x27;ll end up with two adjacent cards for the final draw in the same pile). Since the piles are constrained to have no more than 4 cards, this situation can&#x27;t happen.