Every solitaire game on this site is won the same way: get the cards out of the layout and onto the foundations. Variants change the shape of the board and what counts as a legal move, but they share the same building blocks — foundations, tableau play, stock management, and careful sequencing. Learn those once and any game here becomes readable.
Each game page carries its own full rules beside a playable board. This page covers what the games share, then how each of the 19 families changes it.
The rules above are the game. These are the controls, and they work the same way on every board here.
If you would rather think than draw, FreeCell deals every card face-up, so nothing is hidden and almost every game is winnable. Start with Klondike if you have played any solitaire before — it is almost certainly the one you played, and it hides most of the deal, which is what makes it feel like luck as much as judgement.
For short rounds try Pyramid or Golf, and for the long end of the range see the two-deck builders.
The fastest way to learn a new game is to know which family it belongs to. A family shares what you build, how new cards arrive and what winning looks like; the members change one rule at a time. Each section below says how to recognise the family and how it plays, and links its flagship games.
How to recognise it: Seven or so columns with most cards face-down, a stock you turn over into a waste, and four foundations built from Ace to King.
Build the tableau down in alternating colours, expose hidden cards as you go, and feed the four foundations from Ace up to King. The stock rations the rest of the deck. The variants change one thing at a time: Yukon lets you move any face-up stack, Australian Patience builds in suit, Easthaven and Agnes deal whole rows instead of drawing, and Whitehead turns everything face-up.
How to recognise it: The whole deck is dealt face-up and there is no stock. Your only slack is a few holding cells or an empty column.
Perfect information, limited working space. FreeCell gives you four cells and alternating-colour builds; Penguin and Seahaven Towers tighten that to same-suit builds with fewer cells. Baker’s Dozen and King Albert take the cells away entirely, so every column you empty is the only breathing room you get.
How to recognise it: A face-up deck split among two wings of rows around four or eight foundations, with no stock.
Beleaguered Castle starts its foundations with Aces. Citadel builds cards to them during the deal, Fortress gives ten two-way suit rows, and Streets and Alleys leaves the Aces shuffled into the columns. Castle of Indolence adds a second deck and four deep reserves.
How to recognise it: There are no foundations at the start. You assemble descending same-suit runs inside the tableau, and a complete King-to-Ace run is removed as a unit.
Spider deals ten columns from two decks and drops a new row onto every column whenever you run out of moves, so empty columns and clean suit runs are everything. Spiderette and Will o’ the Wisp shrink it to one deck; Simple Simon and Mrs. Mop deal everything face-up. Rouge et Noir adds colour foundations to the same row-dealing engine. The Scorpion branch lets you move any face-up stack regardless of order, which trades hidden information for tangled columns.
How to recognise it: A face-down reserve pile beside a small tableau, and foundations that start on whatever rank was dealt first and wrap around from King to Ace.
Everything hangs on draining the reserve. The tableau is only three to five columns, so most cards route through the stock, the waste and the reserve rather than the board. The base rank is dealt at random (or chosen, in Selective Canfield), and the foundations wrap around it. Eagle’s Wing keeps the trunk reserve with a winged tableau, and Queen of Italy (Terrace) stretches the same reserve-plus-chosen-base idea across two decks.
How to recognise it: The deck is dealt into many small fans of three or so cards. Only the top card of each fan moves, and there is no stock.
Build down in suit one card at a time, and when the position runs dry gather every fan and deal again rather than drawing. Redeals are strictly limited, so the whole game is about what you leave on the table before you shuffle. Trefoil starts with the Aces out, The Fan removes the redeal, and Crescent stretches the idea across two decks.
How to recognise it: Cards laid in an overlapping triangle. Only uncovered cards are in play, and you remove them in pairs that add to thirteen.
Geometry instead of foundations. You dismantle the shape from the outside in, pairing exposed cards that sum to thirteen, with a stock and waste to supply partners. The variants change the stock cadence (Tut’s Tomb), add waste piles (Apophis), remove the stock altogether (Giza) or invert the shape (Triangle).
How to recognise it: A small open layout of cards that you clear by discarding pairs — cards that add to a target number, or that match in rank.
Matching instead of building. Baroness, Good Thirteen and Fourteen Out pair to a sum; Elevens, Eight Cards and Gay Gordons add court-card pairs; Nestor and its variants match rank for rank. Rounds are short, nearly everything is visible, and the difficulty is noticing which pair you are about to bury.
How to recognise it: Two decks dealt as a block of eight to ten columns, eight foundations, and a stock you get through once or twice.
The big classical builders. Forty Thieves (Napoleon at St Helena) builds down in suit one card at a time and gives you a single pass through the stock, which makes it one of the hardest games on the site. Its relatives loosen a rule each: Emperor and Diplomat relax the building, Congress and Parliament refill empty columns from the waste, and Napoleon’s Square lets same-suit runs move together.
How to recognise it: Eight or so columns receive a card from the stock at the same time; ordered groups move between the deals.
Miss Milligan deals one open card to each column and adds a temporary waive reserve after the stock. Millie removes that reserve, Giant and Imperial Guards relax empty-column rules, and the Cell, Harp and Yukon relatives change how cards start or move.
How to recognise it: A large reserve, grid or arch of cards that has to be unlocked, with foundations that matter more than the tableau.
Progress is gated by a reserve rather than by tableau building. Sultan surrounds a King with foundations, Royal Cotillion and Carpet deal a grid you refill, Backbone and Archway pile the reserve into a shape you dig through, and Tournament gives you reserve slots instead of a working tableau. Queen’s Audience retires royal pairs from a sixteen-card antechamber, and Leoni’s Own and Weavers cycle the stock through a rank-numbered loom. Most are two-deck games that reward planning the order you free the reserve in.
How to recognise it: Kings or Queens are set out as column bases, and the foundations start on odd ranks and build regardless of suit.
Salic Law strips the Queens and deals everything onto eight Kings, then builds Ace-to-Jack foundations regardless of suit. Intrigue, Laggard Lady and Glencoe put Queens in charge and split the foundations into descending Five-piles and ascending Six-piles. Small family, distinctive rules: nothing else on the site starts its foundations mid-deck.
How to recognise it: The cards form a distinctive shape — a windmill, a clock face, a braid, a square — and where a card sits decides what it can do.
Position dictates the rule. Windmill and Big Ben arrange foundations in a cross or a clock, Braid and British Square use a plait and a square, and Royal Parade and Virginia Reel turn the tableau into a grid of foundations stepping by threes.
How to recognise it: Cards occupy fixed grid cells or ordered piles, and moving one changes which gaps or patterns can be completed.
Gaps and Double Montana fill holes with the next card in suit; Maze connects all rows into a loop. Poker Squares scores lines in a five-by-five grid, while Ninety-One challenges you to expose pile tops with a target total.
How to recognise it: No tableau to build on. Each card off the stock goes to a foundation or to one of a few waste piles you control, and only the top of each pile is available.
Sir Tommy is the root: four waste piles, foundations built Ace to King regardless of suit, and no way back once a card is placed. Lady Betty and Colours add suit and colour rules, Calculation builds the foundations by different intervals, Colorado spreads twenty waste piles across two decks, and Birthday and Rosamund’s Bower deal to a discard with wrapping foundations.
How to recognise it: A single waste pile, and you play any exposed card that is one rank above or below its top card.
Golf lays out seven columns and asks for the longest chain of adjacent ranks you can find; Tri Peaks does the same across three overlapping peaks with wraparound; Black Hole deals everything face-up around one foundation and lets ranks wrap in both directions.
How to recognise it: The rules force nearly every move, so the game either resolves or stalls; or there is no chance at all and it is a pure puzzle.
Clock and Royal Flush play out by themselves once dealt, Perpetual Motion may loop forever, and Tower of Pisa is a Tower of Hanoi puzzle in card form. They are here for the ritual, not the decisions.
How to recognise it: Fresh rows cover earlier cards, while gaps in the lower rows reopen access to the cards above.
Labyrinth begins with four Ace foundations and refills gaps in its first row. Babette uses two decks, eight foundations and one redeal. Cicely combines a reserve with eight columns that accept same-suit descending builds between row deals.
How to recognise it: Cards travel from one numbered pile to the pile matching their rank, often until a King ends the chain.
Travellers, The Clock, Four of a Kind, Hidden Cards and Hide and Seek reorder a deck by rank with different layouts and starting points. Spoilt uses a smaller 32-card pack and gives each card a place by suit and rank.
Klondike, Yukon, and Easthaven all feel related, but they handle hidden cards, stock access, and movement freedom differently. FreeCell removes hidden information, Spider focuses on same-suit sequence cleanup, and Pyramid shifts the puzzle toward value matching instead of foundation building.
The fastest way to improve across variants is to first identify which family you are playing, then read the strategy guide for that specific game.