Solitaire

What is Solitaire?

Solitaire — also known as Klondike, the version that shipped with every PC since the nineties — is the world's most-played single-player card game. A standard 52-card deck is shuffled and dealt into seven tableau columns, and your goal is to untangle it: move every card onto the four foundations, building each suit up from Ace to King. This edition plays draw-1 Klondike with classic scoring, so every smart move earns points and every wasted second after a win shrinks your time bonus. In daily mode everyone in the world gets the exact same seeded shuffle, which turns a quiet card game into a genuinely fair leaderboard race.

How to play

• Desktop: click the stock (top-left pile) to draw a card. Click any face-up card to select it — legal destinations light up — then click where you want it to go. Double-click a card to send it straight to its foundation. Space or D draws, Escape clears your selection.
• Mobile: tap the stock to draw, tap a card and then a glowing pile to move it, or double-tap a card to fire it onto its foundation.
• Tableau columns build downward in alternating colors (a red 9 goes on a black 10). Foundations build upward in a single suit, starting from the Ace. Only Kings may occupy empty columns, and face-up runs move together as a unit.
• Scoring: +5 for waste-to-tableau, +10 for any card that reaches a foundation, +5 for every card you flip face-up, and −15 if you dig a card back out of a foundation. Winning adds a bonus of up to 700 points that shrinks by 2 for every second on the clock.
• When the stock and waste are empty and every card is face-up, the Auto-finish button clears the rest of the board for you. Stuck with no useful moves left? End run banks your current points.

Strategy tips

1. Always flip first. A move that turns a face-down card face-up is almost always better than any alternative — it scores +5 and reveals new options. Prefer digging into the longest face-down stacks early.
2. Don't rush cards to the foundations. Low cards (2s and 3s) are often more useful in the tableau as landing spots. Sending them up too early can strand cards you still need to place — and pulling them back down costs 15 points.
3. Empty columns are for Kings — but choose wisely. Before you clear a column, check which King you can actually move into it, and whether that King's queen-and-jack chain is reachable. A column wasted on a buried King is a column lost.
4. Play the waste patiently. In draw-1 you will see every stock card, and the recycle is free — so you can afford to leave a card in the waste until the perfect landing spot appears.
5. Speed is worth up to 700 points. The win bonus drops by 2 points per second, so a clean five-minute clear banks around 100 bonus points while a three-minute clear banks over 300. Once the win is certain, stop optimizing and finish fast.

FAQ

Is this the same as classic Klondike Solitaire?

Yes — seven tableau columns, four foundations, stock and waste, draw-1 rules with free recycles, and the traditional standard scoring model. If you have played the desktop classic, you already know this game.

Can every deal be won?

No. Most draw-1 Klondike deals are winnable in principle, but a meaningful fraction are not, and some winnable ones require perfect foresight. That is why the End run button always lets you bank your points: a strong partial clear still counts on the leaderboard.

How does the daily deal work?

Every day at midnight UTC a new seed is generated, and every player receives the identical shuffle. Same board, same 24-card stock, same buried aces — the daily leaderboard measures pure skill and speed, not luck.

What is a good score?

Around 350 points means you made real progress into the deck. A win typically lands between 700 and 1,100 depending on your speed, and anything above 1,200 is an exceptionally fast, clean clear.

Is there an undo button?

No — runs are deliberately undo-free so that daily boards stay fair. Every move is final, which makes planning two or three moves ahead part of the skill.