Canfield Solitaire

How to play Canfield Solitaire

Canfield is one of the toughest and most storied games in the whole solitaire family — named, so the story goes, after a Gilded-Age casino owner who supposedly sold Canfield decks to gamblers for a dollar and paid out five dollars for every card that reached a foundation, banking on the fact that hardly anyone ever finished. Unlike Klondike, where every deal starts with the same four Aces waiting at zero, Canfield draws a single random card at the start of each deal and turns its rank into the target the whole game revolves around: every foundation must begin on that same rank, and once you reach the top of the sequence the count wraps back around to the bottom instead of stopping. That single twist changes almost everything about how you read the board, and it is what makes Canfield feel like a genuinely different puzzle from its cousins even though the cards and the deck are exactly the same 52 you already know.

The goal

Your job is still to retire all 52 cards onto the four foundation piles, one per suit, but the starting point is not the Ace. When the deal begins, one card is drawn as the base card and placed immediately onto its own suit’s foundation; the RANK of that card — anywhere from Ace to King — becomes the base rank for the entire game. Every foundation, including the three that start empty, can only accept that same rank as its first card. From there each foundation counts upward one rank at a time, and when it passes King it wraps straight back around to Ace and keeps climbing until it has gathered all thirteen cards of its suit. The game is won the moment every foundation reaches thirteen.

A game named after a gambler

Canfield takes its name from Richard Canfield, a professional gambler who ran high-stakes casinos in Providence, Saratoga Springs and New York City around the turn of the twentieth century. As the story is usually told, Canfield noticed patrons losing money hand over fist at roulette and faro but always wanting something quieter to do between hands, so he sold them decks of cards for the price of a chip and offered to buy back every card they managed to land on a foundation. The game looked simple enough to tempt anyone, but its combination of a hidden reserve, a floating base rank and unlimited but slow redeals made a full clearance rare — which, of course, was exactly the point for a casino built on the house edge.

The deal

A single shuffled 52-card deck is dealt in a fixed order. First, thirteen cards form the reserve, stacked so only the top card is visible and playable — think of it as a second stock that never refills. Next, one card is turned up as the base card; it goes straight onto its suit’s foundation and fixes the base rank for the whole deal, so watch the HUD’s “Base” indicator closely. Then four cards are dealt out, one to each of the four tableau columns, all face up. The remaining thirty-four cards become the stock, ready to be turned three at a time onto the waste pile beside it. Tap New Deal for a fresh shuffle, or Restart Deal to replay this exact layout — including the same base rank — from the very beginning.

The base rank: Canfield’s core idea

The base rank is the single idea that separates Canfield from every other solitaire in this collection, so it is worth dwelling on. Suppose the base card turns out to be a six. All four foundations — not just the one that already holds that six — can now only accept a six as their opening card, whenever one becomes available from the reserve, the tableau or the waste. Once a foundation has its six, the next card it needs is a seven, then an eight, and so on up through the nine, ten, jack, queen and king. After the king, instead of stopping, the sequence WRAPS back around to the ace, then the two, three, four and five, before the foundation finally closes out at thirteen cards. Every foundation follows this identical wrapped cycle, just starting and ending at different visible ranks depending on the base you were dealt.

How to move cards

• Tap a card to pick it up — the reserve’s top card, the waste’s top card, or a legal run on the tableau — then tap the pile where it should land. Tap the same card again to put it back down.
• On the tableau, cards build DOWN in alternating colours exactly like Klondike, but the sequence wraps: a King may be dropped onto an Ace of the opposite colour, since a King is only one step below an Ace once you go around the corner. You may move a single card or an entire ordered run together, provided the run itself is a valid wrapped, alternating sequence from top to bottom.
• Foundations build UP by suit starting from the base rank and wrap the same way the tableau does: after the King comes the Ace again, then the two, three and onward, until that foundation holds all thirteen cards of its suit.
• The reserve holds thirteen cards face down except for its single visible top card, which is always available to play to the tableau or a foundation. Whenever it becomes playable, tap it like any other card. There is no way to look ahead into the reserve — only the top card is ever in play.
• Whenever a move empties a tableau column completely, the column is refilled automatically and immediately from the top of the reserve, for as long as the reserve still has cards. This happens as part of the very same move, so you do not need to do anything extra — just watch the column repopulate. Only once the reserve itself is completely used up does an emptied column stay empty, and from that point on you may drop any single card or run into it.
• Tap the stock to turn three cards face up onto the waste at once; only the top waste card is playable. When the stock is empty, tap it again to flip the whole waste back over and continue — redeals are unlimited, so no deal is lost purely because you have cycled the stock too many times.

Winning and scoring

You win the instant all four foundations hold thirteen cards apiece — all 52 cards accounted for, each one sitting in its wrapped sequence from the base rank back around to one card before it. A banner then shows your total moves, your elapsed time and your final score, and — unlike some easier solitaire variants — genuinely winnable Canfield deals are the exception rather than the rule, so treat every clean sweep as a real achievement worth savouring. Your score is submitted automatically to the single Canfield leaderboard the moment you win, and your best result on this device is remembered so you always know the record you are chasing.

Strategy tips

• Get a feel for the base rank the moment the deal appears — knowing whether it wraps early (a low rank like 2 or 3) or late (a high rank like Jack or King) tells you how much of the tableau’s natural order you can rely on before you hit the wrap seam.
• Empty tableau columns refill automatically from the reserve, so do not be afraid to empty one on purpose — it is often the fastest way to work through the thirteen-card reserve and expose cards buried near its bottom, which you can otherwise never see.
• Because a foundation’s very first card must match the base rank exactly, hold onto a spare card of that rank if you find one loose on the tableau or waste rather than burying it under a run — every suit needs one to even begin climbing.
• Runs that cross the wrap seam (a King sitting on an Ace, for example) are perfectly legal and often the only way to keep a long tableau sequence moving, so do not overlook them just because they look unusual next to a normal descending run.
• Redeals are unlimited, so if you seem stuck, cycle the stock through the waste a few more times before assuming the deal is unwinnable — a card you skipped on an earlier pass may now have somewhere to go once the tableau and foundations have shifted.

Frequently asked questions