How to play
Klondike. Get all fifty-two cards onto the four foundations, each one built up from its ace to its king in a single suit. That is the whole of winning.
The table
Seven columns across the bottom, dealt one card deeper each: one card in the first, seven in the last, and only the bottom card of each face up. Above them, the stock on the left with the rest of the deck face down, the waste beside it where drawn cards land, and the four foundations on the right, one per suit.
The moves
- Onto a column: a card goes on one of the next rank up and the opposite colour. A red six goes on a black seven. A run already built that way moves as a block.
- Onto a foundation: an ace starts it, and after that the next rank of the same suit, one card at a time. A card can come back off a foundation if a column needs it.
- Into an empty column: kings only, and a king already sitting alone in one has nowhere useful to go.
- Turning a card: uncovering a face-down card in a column turns it over, always, immediately. It is part of the move rather than a decision.
- The stock: tap it to draw. When it runs out, tap the empty space to turn the waste back over and go round again — as often as you like.
Playing it here
- Tap a card and it goes where it most obviously wants to go: to its foundation if that is safe, otherwise to the best column that will have it. This is the quickest way to play and the one to learn first — on a card this size, tapping beats dragging.
- Drag if you would rather choose the destination yourself. The card follows your finger exactly, and springs back if you let go somewhere it cannot land.
- Press and hold a column to fan it right out and read the cards buried in it. Let go and it closes; nothing has moved.
- Undo as far back as you like, as many times as you like. There is no penalty and no score, so nothing is at stake in trying something.
- Hint points at one move worth making. If there are none at all it says so — that is a fact about the position, not a loss. Nothing here ever tells you that you have lost: you decide when a deal is over.
- Finish replaces Hint once every card is face up and the stock is spent. At that point the deal is already won, and this plays it out rather than making you tap fifty times.
Draw one, or draw three
Draw one turns a single card at a time and most deals can be won. Draw three turns three and you may only play the top of them, which is the harder, more traditional game. Both are in the menu, and changing it starts a new deal, because the same cards make a genuinely different game under each rule.
Deal numbers
Every deal has a number, and that number means the same deal on every
device, forever. Share one from the panel at the end of a game, or put it
in the address as ?deal=24. Replaying a deal you have won
races you against your own best time.
By default deals come from a pool that has been solved in advance, so the one you are given can be won. That is a setting, and turning it off deals from the whole deck of possibilities — which is the honest version of the game, and sometimes an unwinnable one.
There is also a daily deal: the same one for everybody, changing at midnight, with a streak if you keep coming back.
With a keyboard
The whole game plays from the keyboard, with no pointer at all. The arrow keys move between the thirteen piles — the board is one thing to move around in, not fifty-two things to tab through — and space picks up and puts down.
- ←→
- Move between piles
- ↑↓
- Take more or fewer cards from a column
- Space
- Pick up, and put down
- Esc
- Put back what you picked up
- S
- Draw from the stock
- A
- Send a card to its foundation
- H
- Hint
- F
- Finish, once the deal is won
- Z
- Undo
- N
- New deal
- R
- Replay this deal
- ?
- This list
Pressing ? in the game shows this list without leaving it.
Reading the cards
If the cards are hard to read, the menu has three things worth trying before anything else: the High-contrast deck, with much larger indices; the Four-colour deck, which gives every suit its own colour so red and black never have to be told apart; and the three tables, one of which will suit your screen and your light better than the others.
The game is also usable with a screen reader. Each pile describes itself in full — how many cards it holds, how many are face down, and what is on top — and every move is announced as it happens.