Solitaire

How to play Klondike Solitaire

Klondike is the classic solitaire that ships with almost every computer — the one most people simply call "Solitaire." It is a quiet, one-player card game you can pick up for two minutes or two hours. Open Settings to choose draw one (turn a single card from the stock — the easier game) or draw three (turn three at a time, with only the top card in play — the tougher, more traditional version). Either way you can recycle the stock as often as you like, so a patient player can usually work their way through.

Goal

Build all four foundation piles in the top-right, one for each suit, from Ace up to King. Move every one of the 52 cards there and you win.

The board

• Seven tableau columns hold the deal. The first column has one card, the second two, and so on; only the bottom card of each column starts face-up.
• The stock sits top-left. Click it to flip the next card to the waste beside it.
• The waste holds the card you just drew — its top card is always in play.
• Four foundations top-right are where you build each suit up to King and win.

Moves

• Build down the tableau in alternating colours — a red six goes on a black seven, and so on.
• Move a single card, or drag a properly-ordered run of cards together, from one column to another.
• Only a King (alone or with a run beneath it) may move into an empty column.
• Send a card to its foundation when it's the next rank up for that suit. Double-click a card to send it there automatically.
• Whenever a face-down card becomes the bottom of a column, it flips face-up for free.

Strategy

Turn over face-down cards as early as you can — every hidden card is a card you can't yet plan around. Don't rush low cards to the foundations; a two or three left in the tableau often gives you somewhere to park an off-colour card. Try to empty a column so you have a landing spot for a King, and think a move or two ahead before you commit a draw from the stock. Use undo freely to test a line, and start a fresh deal any time the board stalls.

Dóra's Rules — the 3-2-1 variant

Settings also offers a third mode we call Dóra's Rules. You get exactly three passes through the stock: on the first you draw three cards at a time, on the second only two, and on the third just one. After that third pass the stock is locked — there are no more redeals — so if the board is stuck, the game is lost. It turns easygoing Klondike into a real test: each pass gives you finer access to the buried cards, but you have to make them count. This isn't a documented standard variant; it's a family house rule, taught to one of us more than forty years ago by his mother, Halldóra — always "Dóra" — and named in her honour.