40 terms, from the parts of the layout to the rules that separate one family from another. Each definition links to boards on this site where you can see the idea in play, and every game page links back here for the terms it relies on.
Also called: layout, the board.
The main playing area: the columns, fans or grid the deal is laid out in. Most of the game happens here, moving cards between piles to uncover what you need. The rules for building on the tableau are what separate one family from another.
See it in play:
A pile that cards are permanently played to, usually one per suit, built in rank order. In most games the goal is to move every card to the foundations. Some games build them down, some start them on a rank other than Ace, and a few have none at all.
See it in play:
Also called: talon, hand, the pack.
The face-down pile of cards left over after the deal. You turn it over into a waste pile, or in some games deal a whole row from it onto the tableau. How many times you may go through the stock is one of the biggest difficulty settings in solitaire.
See it in play (144 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: discard, talon.
The face-up pile the stock is turned onto. Only its top card is available. In the Sir Tommy family the waste piles are the whole game: each card off the stock must go to a foundation or to one of a few waste piles you choose.
See it in play (108 games use this; a few of them):
A pile or group of cards set aside at the deal that cannot be built on. Cards leave the reserve for the tableau or foundations, and the reserve refills nothing. Canfield keeps a thirteen-card face-down reserve; Sultan and Royal Cotillion are built around theirs.
See it in play (62 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: cell, flipper.
A holding space that takes exactly one card. Cells give you somewhere to park a card while you rearrange the tableau, and in FreeCell they are the only slack you get. Penguin calls them flippers; Seahaven Towers gives you two.
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Also called: space, vacancy.
A tableau column with no cards in it. Empty columns are the most valuable resource in most solitaires because they let you move cards out of the way. Games differ on what may fill one: only a King, any card, or nothing at all once it is empty.
See it in play (70 games use this; a few of them):
The rule that an empty column may be filled only by a King, or by a sequence headed by a King. It is the Klondike default and the main difference between Scorpion and Wasp: Wasp lets anything into a space, which makes it much more forgiving.
See it in play (18 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: packing.
Placing a card on another card in rank order. The tableau usually builds down (a Seven on an Eight) and the foundations build up. Every family adds a suit or colour condition to that: alternating colours, same suit, same colour, or none.
See it in play (124 games use this; a few of them):
Build down so that each card is the opposite colour to the one beneath it: red on black, black on red. The Klondike and FreeCell rule. It is more permissive than building in suit, so games that use it tend to be easier.
See it in play (48 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: in suit.
Build down only on a card of the same suit. It is the Spider rule and the reason Spider is hard: half the cards you could place under Klondike rules are illegal. Australian Patience and Seahaven Towers apply it to otherwise familiar layouts.
See it in play (48 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: any suit.
Build down by rank alone, ignoring suit and colour entirely. It makes the tableau easy to build and hard to unbuild, because sequences of mixed suits cannot go to the foundations together. Beleaguered Castle and Baker’s Dozen use it.
See it in play (25 games use this; a few of them):
Build down on a card of the same colour: red on red, black on black. Rare, and the signature of Whitehead, where it combines with an all-face-up deal.
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Also called: run, packed sequence.
A group of cards already in correct building order on the tableau, for example a black Nine, red Eight and black Seven. Most games let you move a whole sequence at once. Whether a sequence is a legal unit, and how long it may be, depends on the game.
See it in play (57 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: supermove, stack move.
Moving several cards together as one unit. In Klondike that unit must be a properly built sequence. Yukon and Scorpion let you move any face-up group regardless of order, dragging whatever sits on top of the card you want along with it.
See it in play (57 games use this; a few of them):
The rule that only one card may move at a time, even if a longer sequence is correctly built. It turns rearranging the tableau into a slow shuffle through spaces, and is what makes Forty Thieves and Beleaguered Castle demanding.
See it in play (73 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: discarding a suit.
In Spider-type games there are no foundations to build toward one card at a time. Instead, when a full King-to-Ace sequence of one suit is assembled on the tableau, the whole run is lifted off the board. Eight such runs (or four, in one-deck versions) win the game.
See it in play (11 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: base card, foundation base.
The rank the foundations start on when it is not fixed at Ace. In Canfield the first card dealt to a foundation sets it; in Selective Canfield you choose it. Every foundation then builds from that rank and wraps around after the King.
See it in play (38 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: round-the-corner, circular building.
Building that continues past the King back to the Ace, so Queen, King, Ace, Two is a legal sequence. Foundations that start on a base rank always wrap; some tableaus do too. Black Hole lets ranks wrap in both directions.
See it in play (38 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: ascending and descending foundations.
Foundations of which some build up from the Ace and others build down from the King, usually one of each per suit in a two-deck game. When an ascending and descending foundation of the same suit meet, some games let you move cards between them.
See it in play (29 games use this; a few of them):
Foundations that build by a step other than one: every second rank, every third, or a different interval for each pile. Calculation builds its four foundations by ones, twos, threes and fours; Royal Parade builds each row by threes.
See it in play (12 games use this; a few of them):
Some games have no building on the layout at all: cards go straight from the stock, reserve or waste to the foundations. Play is about choosing where to put cards you cannot use yet, which is the whole art of the Sir Tommy family.
See it in play (46 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: open game, perfect information.
A game in which every card is face-up from the start and there is no stock, so nothing is hidden. Every open game can in principle be solved by thinking, which is why FreeCell deals are almost always winnable and why losing one feels personal.
See it in play (53 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: recycle, pass, turning the stock.
Gathering the waste (or the whole tableau, in fan games) and going through it again as a new stock. Games ration this: unlimited in easy Klondike, two in Canfield, none in Forty Thieves. Running out of redeals with cards still buried is the usual way to lose.
See it in play (57 games use this; a few of them):
Instead of turning the stock one card at a time, some games deal one card face-up onto every column at once. Spider does this whenever you ask; Easthaven and Agnes do it in place of a waste. A row deal buries every column, so you clear what you can first.
See it in play (36 games use this; a few of them):
How many cards turn from the stock to the waste at a time. Draw one shows every card in order and is much easier; draw three shows only every third card on each pass, so which cards you can reach changes as the waste shrinks. Klondike offers both.
See it in play (108 games use this; a few of them):
An empty tableau space that is filled automatically from the waste or the stock rather than by a card you choose. It keeps the layout full and takes the decision away from you, so you must think about what an empty space will draw in before creating it.
See it in play (17 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: draw, grace.
A single allowed cheat: after the last redeal, you may pull one buried card of your choice out of a fan and play it. Three Shuffles and a Draw is La Belle Lucie with a merci, and that one card turns a hard game into a fair one.
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Also called: discarding game, pairing game.
A solitaire won by removing cards from the layout rather than building them somewhere. Pyramid pairs cards to thirteen, Nestor pairs matching ranks, Golf plays cards one rank away from the waste. They are the shortest games on the site.
See it in play (25 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: pairs summing to a target.
Removing two exposed cards whose ranks add to a target, with Jack, Queen and King counting eleven, twelve and thirteen. Thirteen is the Pyramid number (a King leaves alone); Elevens and Gay Gordons use eleven, Fourteen Out uses fourteen.
See it in play (13 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: pairing by rank.
Removing two exposed cards of the same rank. Nestor deals the deck so that no column holds two cards of one rank, then asks you to find the pairs across columns. Royal Marriage removes cards trapped between two matching ones.
See it in play (7 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: one up or one down.
Playing a card that is one rank higher or one rank lower than the top of the waste, regardless of suit. Golf, Tri Peaks and Black Hole are built on it. The skill is chaining as many adjacent cards as possible before you have to draw.
See it in play:
A small pile dealt slightly spread so every card shows, usually three cards, of which only the top card may move. La Belle Lucie deals eighteen fans; the family is named for them.
See it in play (9 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: gaps, holes.
The deal forms rows and columns, and position matters: a card may only move into a gap in the grid, or a whole row is a foundation. Gaps has you fill four rows into suit order; Carpet and Royal Cotillion refill a grid from the stock.
See it in play (24 games use this; a few of them):
Also called: windmill, Four Seasons layout.
The tableau is arranged as a cross with the foundations at its corners or centre. Windmill has a King foundation in the middle and Ace foundations on the sails; Czarina and Rosamund’s Bower are single-deck crosses.
See it in play (8 games use this; a few of them):
Twelve or thirteen piles arranged in a ring like a clock face, one per rank. In Clock the game plays itself out; in Big Ben the ring is twelve foundations built by suit; in Zodiac the ring is a reserve you feed the foundations from.
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Also called: mechanical game.
A game in which the rules leave no choice: each card goes where it must and the deal either works out or it does not. Clock and Royal Flush are pure chance played by hand; Perpetual Motion can loop forever.
See it in play (12 games use this; a few of them):
A solitaire with no chance at all once dealt: the position is fully known and a solution is a matter of working it out. Tower of Pisa is the Tower of Hanoi with cards.
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Also called: deal number.
The number in a game’s address that fixes the shuffle. The same seed always deals the same cards, so you can replay a deal, send it to someone, or come back to it later. Every board on this site takes a seed in its URL.
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Also called: solvable deal, verified deal.
A deal that has at least one winning line of play, checked by a solver rather than assumed. Klondike and FreeCell here can deal only from pools of verified-winnable seeds, and can check whether the position in front of you still has a way out.
See it in play:
The rules guide puts these terms together: one short section per family on what you build, how cards arrive and what winning looks like.
The FAQ answers the practical versions: which game to start with, why empty columns matter, how many redeals you get.
Browse the families, use the game finder, or go straight to the A–Z index.