Staircase rook polynomials and Cayley's game of mousetrap (Q1003606)

The game of mousetrap is analyzed to a certain extent. In this solitary game a player has a deck of \(n\) cards numbered 1 to \(n\). After shuffling he starts examining the cards from the top keeping the cards in the same circular order. If the i-th card happens to represent the number i he removes this card form the deck and starts counting with 1 again. The game stops if the counting reaches the number \(n+1\) or if the deck is empty. In the first case the player lost, in the latter it's a win. Analyzing this games is far more interesting than playing it. The author determines formula's for the number of decks in which exactly one or at least two specific cards are removed in terms of rook polynomials. For two specific cases he shows that there is a connection to the number of derangements. The arguments in Section 2 are better understood by drawing appropriate pictures (or at least that is my personal perception), it is hard to grasp them from the written text. In the final observations the author mentions some hidden relations between indices in his Table 6 without making them explicit. The actual question of the number of winning decks remains open and far from solved.