Golf Solitaire

How to play Golf Solitaire

Golf Solitaire is a quick, single-player card game — a “patience” you play alone against a shuffled deck — named after its scorecard, which reads like a round of golf where a low tally is a good tally. The whole deck is on the table from the very first second: thirty-five cards are fanned into seven columns, and the rest wait in a face-down stock. Your job is to peel cards off the bottoms of those columns onto a single waste pile, one at a time, choosing only cards that sit exactly one rank above or below the card currently showing on the waste. There is no deep hidden information and no opponent, just a clean chain-building puzzle that rewards looking a few moves ahead. A game takes two or three minutes, which makes it perfect for a coffee break, and because the layout is fully visible you can plan real strategy rather than rely on luck alone.

The goal

Clear the course. You win a round by removing all thirty-five tableau cards from the seven columns and onto the waste before the stock runs out. If you empty every column you have “cleared the course”; if the stock is exhausted while cards remain, the round ends and your score reflects how many cards you managed to remove and the longest unbroken run you built along the way. Fewer cards left and longer runs both mean a higher score.

The layout

A standard 52-card deck is shuffled and dealt into seven columns of five face-up cards each — thirty-five cards in all — with the columns fanned downward so that every card is visible but only the bottom card of each column is free to move. The seventeen leftover cards form the face-down stock, and the top one is turned up immediately to start the waste pile (also called the foundation). That means play begins with sixteen cards in the stock and one card face-up on the waste. Suits are irrelevant in Golf: only the rank of a card matters. The timer starts on your first action, so you can study the board as long as you like before committing to a plan.

Making moves

• Look at the card face-up on the waste. Any exposed card — the bottom card of one of the seven columns — may be moved onto the waste if its rank is exactly one higher OR one lower than the waste card. A 7 accepts a 6 or an 8; a Jack accepts a 10 or a Queen. Suit never matters.
• Tap the highlighted bottom card of a column to slide it onto the waste. It becomes the new waste card, and the card that was above it in the column is now exposed and ready to play next. This is how you build a run: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9… or downward 9, 8, 7…
• When no bottom card can legally play, turn one card from the stock onto the waste by tapping the stock pile. That fresh card gives you a new rank to build from — but flipping the stock ends your current run and there is no redeal, so every flip is a card you can never get back.
• You can never build back onto the tableau or move a card between columns; cards only ever travel one way, from a column bottom (or the stock) onto the waste. Made a move you regret? Use Undo to step back as far as you like within the current deal.

Up, down, and the A–K wrap

Rank order runs Ace, 2, 3, … 10, Jack, Queen, King. The only question the difficulty setting changes is what happens at the two ends of that line. On Easy the ends wrap around: an Ace and a King count as neighbours, so a King on the waste accepts a Queen or an Ace, and an Ace accepts a 2 or a King. On Hard there is no wrap: the King is a dead end that only ever accepts a Queen, and an Ace only ever accepts a 2. Hard is genuinely harder because those wrap moves — which often rescue a stuck position — simply are not available, so plan your King and Ace cards carefully.

Winning and scoring

The round ends the instant you clear the last tableau card (a win) or the moment the stock is empty and no legal move remains (the course beat you). Either way a banner shows your result and your score, and the score is submitted to the leaderboard for the mode you played — Easy and Hard are ranked separately. Your best score on this device is remembered per mode, so each difficulty has its own record to chase.

Strategy tips

• Plan long runs before you touch a card. The single biggest source of points is a long unbroken chain, so trace the sequence of ranks you could play — up and down — before committing, and follow the route that clears the most cards without a stock flip.
• Dig toward buried cards you need. If a rank you want is trapped under others, spend your early, cheap moves uncovering it so it is exposed exactly when the waste reaches the right value.
• Hoard the stock. Every flip breaks your run and can never be undone by more flips, so treat the stock as an emergency reserve. Exhaust every tableau move you can find before turning a new card.
• Keep several columns “live”. Try not to empty the board evenly; instead leave yourself options at more than one rank so that whatever the waste shows, some column can answer it. A position with choices survives; a position with one legal move is fragile.
• On Hard, respect the Kings and Aces. Because they do not wrap, a King or Ace that surfaces at the wrong time can strand a whole column. Clear the cards around them early, or line them up so a Queen or 2 is ready to continue the chain.

Frequently asked questions