What are the stock, waste, tableau and foundations?
The seven columns are the tableau, where you rearrange cards and uncover face-down cards. The first column begins with one card, the second with two, continuing to seven in the last column. Only the top card of each initial column is face up.
The remaining 24 cards form the stock. Drawing sends cards from the stock to the waste, whose exposed top card is available to play. The four empty foundation spaces each collect one suit.
Which moves are allowed between columns?
Place a face-up card on a card one rank higher and of the opposite colour. A red 8 can go on a black 9. A black 8 cannot go on a black 9, and a red 7 cannot skip directly onto a black 9. Hearts and diamonds are red; clubs and spades are black.
You can move a correctly ordered face-up run together. For example, a black 7 with a red 6 beneath it can move onto a red 8. Removing the last face-up card in a column exposes its next hidden card, which turns face up in our game.
How do the foundations work?
Start each foundation with an ace. Add the 2 of that same suit, then 3, 4 and so on to the king. Foundation building uses matching suits, not alternating colours. Only one card moves to a foundation at a time.
An exposed card can be useful in a column before you send it upward. Our version allows the top foundation card to return to a legal tableau position, which can help with rearranging a sequence.
Can any card fill an empty column?
Only a king can start an empty tableau column. You may move that king alone or move its attached, correctly ordered run. An empty space is therefore useful when it releases a king or helps uncover more hidden cards; it is not a place to park any inconvenient card.
How many cards do you draw?
Easy deals one card at a time with unlimited stock passes. Medium deals up to three at a time with unlimited passes. Hard also deals up to three but allows only three total passes through the stock: the initial pass and two redeals.
In draw-three play, only the exposed top waste card is playable. You cannot take a covered card just because part of it is visible. Our draw-one versus draw-three guide walks through a sample packet.
When have you won?
Win by completing all four foundations through the king. Revealing the face-down cards is important progress, but it is not the final winning condition. Once everything is face up and the stock and waste are empty, our game can finish the remaining foundation moves automatically.
Our collection chooses its deals from solver-checked lists, so the starting deals can be won under their mode’s rules. That does not make every later decision recoverable without undo, and it is not a claim that every random Klondike deal in every version is winnable.
Questions
- Can a queen start an empty column? No. In this Klondike version, only a king or a run beginning with a king can fill an empty column.
- Do foundations alternate colours? No. Each foundation uses one suit, ascending from ace to king. Alternating colours apply to descending tableau columns.
- Does Hard allow unlimited redeals? No. Our Hard mode allows the initial stock pass and two redeals, for three passes total.
