About Solitaire
Solitaire is the game a hundred million people learned by accident because it came with the computer. Klondike is the version they learned: seven columns dealt in a staircase, four foundations waiting for aces, and a stock you turn over one card or three at a time. Build down in alternating colours on the tableau, build up by suit on the foundations, and win by getting all fifty-two cards home.
What keeps it interesting after three decades is that it is a game of information, not luck. Twenty-one of the twenty-eight cards on the table start face down, and every move you make is a bet about what is underneath. This version turns over exposed cards for you, counts only real decisions as moves, gives you unlimited undo, and finishes the game automatically once nothing is left to discover.
How to play
- Click a card to pick it up. On the tableau you pick up that card and every face-up card below it.
- Click a destination pile to drop it. Tableau piles build down in alternating colours; only a King goes on an empty column.
- Click the same card a second time to send it straight to its foundation, if it is ready to go.
- Click the stock to turn cards over. When it empties, click it again to recycle the waste — there is no limit on passes.
- Foundations build up by suit from Ace to King. Get all four home and you have won.
Five tips that actually move your score
- Turn over face-down cards before anything else. Every hidden card is information you do not have. A move that reveals one is almost always better than a move that does not, even if it looks less productive.
- Do not rush aces to the foundation — rush them off the tableau. Once a card is on a foundation it can no longer catch a card of the opposite colour. Keeping low cards in play a little longer gives your tableau somewhere to put things.
- Empty a column early, not late. An empty column is the most valuable thing on the board, because it is the only place you can park a King and unstick a stuck run. A column emptied in the endgame is usually worth nothing.
- In draw three, count in threes. The card you want is only reachable on certain passes. Playing one card out of the waste shifts everything after it, which is how you reach a card that was previously buried.
- Use undo as a search tool, not a safety net. Try the line, see what it reveals, and take it back if it dead-ends. That is not cheating yourself — it is how you learn which openings actually branch.
