Solitaire

Solitaire is the card game that taught a generation to use a mouse, and Klondike — the version played here — is the one nearly everyone means when they say the word. One deck, seven columns, four foundations, and a quiet half hour to sort it all out.

The goal is to move all fifty-two cards to the four foundation piles in the top right, each built up by suit from Ace to King. To get there you work the tableau: the seven columns below, where cards stack downward in alternating colours. A red seven goes on a black eight, a black six on that red seven, and so on. Move a card and you may expose a face-down one underneath, which is the small reward that keeps the game ticking along.

Empty columns are the resource that decides most games. Only a King — or a sequence headed by one — can move into an empty space, so clearing a column is worth doing but choosing which King fills it deserves a moment of thought. Fill it carelessly and you have swapped a flexible space for a stuck pile.

The other judgement call is the foundations. Sending cards up feels like progress, and it is how you win, but a low card sitting in the tableau is often more useful than the same card locked away up top, because it gives you somewhere to place the card below it. Experienced players hold back twos and threes far longer than beginners expect.

There is one piece of drudgery Klondike is famous for, and this version removes it. Once the last face-down card is turned over the game is mathematically already won — every column is a clean descending run, so nothing can go wrong — and yet the classic game still makes you click every remaining card up to the foundations one at a time. Here a gold Finish button appears at exactly that moment and plays the rest out for you, card by card, so you watch the win instead of typing it in. It only ever appears when the outcome is already settled, so it never takes a decision away from you.

The game is a campaign across four worlds, and each world changes one rule. Garden Terrace deals one card at a time from the stock with no limit on trips through it. Riverboat Saloon lets you turn the stock over only twice, so every draw becomes a decision. Grand Casino deals three cards at a time with only the top one playable, and Royal Palace combines the two for the tightest hands in the game. Every campaign deal was checked by a solver before it was chosen, so each one can be won, and the deals inside a world run from easy to hard. After the last world the levels keep coming: the hardest hands return under Royal Palace rules in a fresh order with their suits relabelled, never the same hand twice in a row, and each one is still proven winnable.

A win earns stars: three with no hint and no undo, two with no hint, one otherwise. Stars and best times are saved, and a win with fewer than three stars offers a Replay of the same deal. Free play deals a game outside the campaign, and those deals are true Klondike, where some cannot be won at all. There is also a Daily deal, the same for everyone that day.

Tap or click a card and it goes to its best spot: a foundation first, then a column where it uncovers something. You can also drag a card or a run anywhere legal. Tap the stock in the top left to draw; the badge on it shows how many cards are left and, in the two-trip worlds, how many trips remain. Hint shows a good move and Undo takes one back. Keys: Space draw, H hint, Z undo, E finish, N restart.