Klondike Solitaire
The solitaire most people learned first, with cards big enough to read across the room. Tap a card and it moves to the best spot. Undo as often as you like.
How to play Klondike
- Build four foundations. The four spaces at the top right take one suit each, from Ace up to King. Fill all four and you win.
- Work down the seven columns. Place a card on one that is one rank higher and the opposite color, like a red 6 on a black 7. You can move a whole run of face-up cards at once.
- Turn over hidden cards. When you move the face-up cards off a column, the card underneath flips over for you.
- Fill empty columns with a King. Only a King, or a run that starts with a King, can go into an empty column.
- Draw from the stock. Tap the deck at top left to turn cards over. When it runs out, tap the empty space to turn the pile back over and go through it again.
How the cards are dealt
Klondike uses one standard 52-card deck. The seven columns get 28 cards: one card in the first column, two in the second, and so on up to seven in the last. Only the bottom card of each column starts face up. The other 24 cards form the stock.
Draw 1 or Draw 3
Draw 1 turns over one card at a time, so every card in the stock is easy to reach. It is the relaxed way to play, and every Draw 1 deal here was checked by a computer solver before it reaches you, so each game can be won. Draw 3 turns over three cards and only the top one is playable. It is the classic, harder version, and some Draw 3 deals cannot be won.
Tips that win more games
- Turn over hidden cards first. The columns with the most face-down cards, usually on the right, are where a game gets stuck.
- Don't empty a column unless a King is ready to take its place.
- Hold back on moving cards to the foundations when a low card is still needed in the columns, for example a black 5 that a red 4 could sit on.
- When you have a choice of two cards to move, pick the one that frees a face-down card.
- Use Hint when you're stuck. It points to a move and shows where the card can go.
Why is it called Klondike?
The name points to the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s in Canada's Yukon, though nobody has proved the game came from there. In Britain the same game is often called Patience or Canfield, and its cousin Yukon Solitaire borrows from the same region.
Keyboard shortcuts
D draws from the stock, Z undoes, H shows a hint, and N deals a new game.