About this game
Fifty-two cards and one honest problem
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Klondike is the solitaire everyone means when they say solitaire — the one that shipped with the computer, the one with the seven columns and the four empty aces-up piles in the corner. It is a game about turning a face-down board into a face-up one, and the only tool you have for doing it is the order the cards happen to be in.
The rules are almost nothing. Foundations build up from the ace by suit. Columns build down in alternating colours. A king, and only a king, goes on an empty column. The stock feeds the waste, and when the stock runs out the waste turns back into stock and you go round again. That is the entire rulebook, and the depth is all in the fact that a card you move is a card you can no longer put anywhere else.
Where it comes from
The name is a gold-rush joke — the Klondike was where the cards were harder to beat than the ground. It is one of hundreds of patience games catalogued in the nineteenth century, and it would be a minor one except that Microsoft put it on every desk in the world in 1990 to teach people the mouse. A generation learned to drag by dragging a red seven onto a black eight.
What this version does with it
The rules are the standard ones, single-deck, unlimited redeals. You choose draw one or draw three from the gear — one is the forgiving game, three is the one that actually loses. Every card slides rather than snapping, so you can see what a move did; a tap sends a card wherever it legally goes and a double-tap sends it straight home, so you are never dragging when you did not need to. There is an undo for the move you regret, a hint for the one you cannot see, a moves and a time counter, and an auto-finish that appears the moment the board is a formality — when nothing is face-down, the ending is bookkeeping, and the game will do the bookkeeping for you.
Thirty seconds to start
- Tap the stock (top-left) to turn cards to the waste. When it empties, tap the empty slot to recycle.
- Tap any card to send it to the first legal home; drag it if you want to choose. Double-tap sends it to a foundation.
- Build the columns down, alternating colour. Build the foundations up, one suit each, ace first.
The habit worth building
Beginners empty the stock first and play from the waste. Good players turn columns over before they touch the stock, because a face-down card is the only thing in the game that is genuinely unknown, and every one you flip is a move you now get to plan instead of guess. Do not rush an ace to its foundation either — a two of the other colour may still need it.