Klondike Solitaire

How to play Klondike Solitaire

Klondike is the solitaire game so familiar that on hundreds of millions of computers it is simply called “Solitaire”. You play alone with a single shuffled 52-card deck, and your job is to sort every card into four ordered piles. Twenty-eight cards are dealt into seven fanned columns called the tableau; the rest wait in a face-down stock you turn over a few cards at a time. From that scrambled start you tidy the whole deck by building runs on the tableau and feeding the four foundations upward, one suit at a time. Not every deal can be won, which is part of the appeal — a clean victory feels earned. This version offers the two standard modes (draw one card or draw three), unlimited redeals, an undo button, a restart-this-deal button, a move counter, a timer and a ranked score so you can chase your personal best or climb the leaderboard.

The goal

Move all 52 cards onto the four foundation piles in the top-right corner. Each foundation is built up by suit, starting with the Ace and finishing with the King: A, 2, 3 … 10, Jack, Queen, King, all of one suit. The game is won the instant the last King lands and every foundation is complete. Along the way you rearrange the seven tableau columns, turn cards from the stock and shuttle cards back and forth until the whole pack is sorted. The fewer moves and seconds you take, the higher your score.

A game from the gold rush

Solitaire card games — “patience” to the British — spread across Europe in the late 18th century, and by the 1800s dozens of variants filled parlour-game books. This particular layout took its most famous name, Klondike, from the Canadian gold rush of the 1890s: prospectors in the Yukon are said to have passed the long, dark winters dealing it by lamplight. For a hundred years it remained a quiet solo pastime played with a real deck on a real table. Then, in 1990, it was bundled with a hugely popular desktop operating system as a friendly way to teach people the click-and-drag of a computer mouse — and quietly became one of the most-played games in human history. The rules here are the traditional ones; only the green baize is virtual.

The table

Seven tableau columns are dealt left to right: the first holds one card, the second two, and so on up to seven, and only the last (bottom) card of each column starts face up. Twenty-four cards remain in the stock at the top-left. Beside the stock is the waste, where drawn cards land face up, and along the top-right sit the four empty foundations. Pick your mode from the selector before or between deals: Draw 1 turns a single card at a time (easier), Draw 3 turns three at a time (harder). Every deal is a genuine shuffle; use New Deal for a fresh shuffle or Restart Deal to replay the exact same cards from the beginning.

How to move cards

• Tap a face-up card to pick it up (it lifts and glows), then tap a destination pile to drop it there. Tap the same card again to put it back down.
• On the tableau, cards build DOWN in alternating colours: a red six goes on a black seven, a black nine on a red ten, and so on. You can pick up a whole ordered run (for example black 9, red 8, black 7) and move it as one unit.
• Only a King — or a run led by a King — may be moved into a completely empty column. This is the key bottleneck of the game, so guard your empty columns.
• The foundations build UP by suit from the Ace: an Ace starts a foundation, then the 2, 3 and so on of that same suit stack on top. Double-tap any playable card to send it straight to its foundation without aiming.
• Tap the stock to turn cards onto the waste; only the top waste card can be played. When the stock runs out, tap the empty stock (↻) to flip the waste back and go through it again — redeals are unlimited. Turning a face-down tableau card face up happens automatically the moment it becomes the bottom card of its column.

Draw 1 versus Draw 3

The mode selector sets how many cards you turn from the stock at once. In Draw 1 (easy) each tap of the stock reveals a single new card, so every card in the deck is easy to reach and most sensible deals can be solved with patience. In Draw 3 (hard) each tap turns three cards but only the top one is playable; to reach the card beneath it you must first play or bury the ones on top, cycling the stock repeatedly. Draw 3 is the tournament standard and the sterner test — the cards are the same, but planning which pass of the stock will expose the card you need becomes a puzzle in itself. Each mode keeps its own leaderboard.

Winning and scoring

The game is won the moment all 52 cards rest on the foundations. A banner shows your move count, your time and your final score, and the score is submitted automatically to the leaderboard for the mode you played (Draw 1 or Draw 3). Your best result on this device is remembered per mode, so each has its own record to beat. Sign in and your best scores also appear on the global rankings.

Strategy tips

• Always play an Ace or 2 to its foundation right away, but be cautious about sending higher cards up too early — a card on a foundation can no longer catch an opposite-colour card in the tableau. Keep some low cards in play as landing spots.
• Turn a card from the stock before you run out of tableau moves, not after. Once you commit a card from the waste you may open up a chain of moves, so scan the whole table first and expose face-down cards as your top priority.
• Empty columns are gold, but an empty column is only useful if you have a King ready to fill it — or want to shuffle a run through it. Don’t empty a column you cannot immediately use, and try to uncover Kings early.
• Prefer moves that flip a face-down card or empty a column over moves that merely shuffle face-up cards around. Progress is measured in cards turned face up, not in cards moved.
• Use Undo freely to explore — it costs nothing on the leaderboard beyond the moves you make, and Restart Deal lets you attack the same shuffle again with a better plan. For a high score, favour a short, decisive solution over a long fumbling one, because every move and every second nibbles at your bonus.

Frequently asked questions