Yukon Solitaire

How to play Yukon Solitaire

Yukon is Klondike’s tougher, faster-moving cousin, named for the same Canadian territory that gave Klondike its own nickname. The two games share a goal — sort a single 52-card deck onto four suit-ordered foundations — but Yukon throws out the stock and waste entirely. Every single card is dealt face up or face down onto the seven tableau columns before your first move, so there is nothing hidden in reserve and nothing left to draw. In exchange for losing the stock, Yukon hands you a much more generous way to shift cards around: you may lift any face-up card together with every card sitting on top of it and drop the whole group somewhere else, even if those cards are not arranged in a neat alternating-colour run. That one rule changes the whole character of the game — tangled, out-of-order piles are not dead weight the way they are in Klondike, because you can often haul an entire disordered clump out of the way in a single move. This version deals a fresh shuffle every time, keeps a full undo history, lets you replay the exact same deal, tracks your move count and submits a ranked score whenever you clear the board.

The goal

Move all 52 cards onto the four foundation piles. Each foundation is built up strictly by suit, starting with the Ace and ending with the King: Ace, 2, 3 … 10, Jack, Queen, King, all of the same suit. The moment every foundation holds all thirteen of its cards, the game is won. Getting there means constantly digging through the seven tableau columns, exposing the face-down cards buried near the bottom, and relocating whatever sits on top of them — in whole clumps whenever that is useful — until every column is empty and every card has found its foundation home.

The deal

All 52 cards are dealt out before you make a single move — Yukon has no stock and no waste pile to fall back on. The first tableau column holds just one card, dealt face up. Each of the other six columns holds one more face-down card than the column before it, always followed by five face-up cards on top: column two gets 1 face-down + 5 face-up (6 cards), column three gets 2 face-down + 5 face-up (7 cards), and so on up to column seven, which gets 6 face-down + 5 face-up (11 cards). Add it up — 1 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 — and the whole 52-card deck is accounted for exactly, with none left over. The four foundations start empty in a row above the tableau, waiting for their Aces.

How to move cards

• Tap any face-up card to select it — it lifts and glows — then tap the column you want to drop it on. Tap the very same card again to cancel the selection without moving anything.
• This is the rule that sets Yukon apart from Klondike: when you select a face-up card, you pick up that card AND every card stacked above it, as one group, no matter what order those cards are in. A run of mismatched colours or broken sequence moves together just as easily as a tidy alternating-colour run — the only requirement is that the group’s bottom card (the one you tapped) is one rank higher and the opposite colour of the card it is landing on.
• An empty tableau column will only accept a King, or a group whose bottom card is a King. Guard your empty columns carefully — they are the only way to reorganise a badly tangled group of out-of-order cards, since a King-led group can absorb almost anything you stack on it afterwards.
• The foundations build upward by suit starting from the Ace: an Ace opens a foundation, then the 2, 3 and onward of that same suit stack on top of it, one at a time. Double-tap any playable top card to send it straight to its foundation without having to aim for it.
• There is no stock to draw from and nothing to redeal — every card is already on the table from the very first moment. A face-down tableau card turns face up automatically the instant it becomes the exposed top card of its column, which is the main way new options open up as you play.

Winning and scoring

The game is won the instant all 52 cards are resting on the four foundations. A banner then shows your total move count and your final score, and — on a supported site — that score is submitted automatically to the Yukon leaderboard. Your best result on this device is remembered so you always have a personal record to beat, and signing in carries your best scores over to the global rankings too.

Strategy tips

• Prioritise flipping face-down cards over almost everything else. Every face-down card you expose is a brand-new option for you; a move that merely rearranges already face-up cards makes no real progress, however tidy it looks.
• Because whole groups move regardless of order, don’t be afraid to temporarily bury a card you need under a big disorganised clump if doing so frees up a column or exposes something more valuable underneath — you can usually retrieve it later by moving the group again.
• Empty columns are precious real estate: only a King (or a King-led group) can start a new one, so hunt for buried Kings early and try to clear a path to them before committing your last empty column elsewhere.
• Resist sending cards to the foundations the instant they become available if a low card might still be needed in the tableau to catch an opposite-colour card. Once a card is on a foundation it can no longer receive anything in the tableau, so time your foundation moves rather than rushing them.
• Use Undo freely while you plan a tricky sequence of group moves — it costs nothing but restores the exact position, and Restart Deal lets you replay the identical shuffle with a smarter plan once you understand where the trouble spots are. Because the score rewards fewer moves, a short, well-planned solution always beats a long one, even if the long one also wins.

Frequently asked questions