How to play Klondike Solitaire
Klondike is the classic patience game — the one most people mean by "solitaire". Twenty-eight cards are dealt into seven columns, one card face up on each pile, and the rest becomes a draw pile. You win by building all four suits from ace to king in the four foundations at the top. There is a Daily deal that is the same for everyone and has been checked to be winnable, and a Practice mode that deals a fresh board whenever you like, turning one card at a time or three.
Or play Klondike Solitaire Arcade, a real-time run played for a personal best.
How to play
- Move cards between columns by building downwards in alternating colours — a red six goes on a black seven. A run in order moves as one.
- Turn a card from the pile when you are stuck. When the pile runs out, the same control turns the whole thing back over so you can go through it again.
- Send aces up to the foundations, then build each suit upwards in order. The foundations are how you win.
- Turning over the last face-down card in a column empties it, and an empty column takes a king and nothing else.
- Win by getting all fifty-two cards home.
Tips & strategy
- Uncover face-down cards before anything else. A move that turns one over is almost always better than a move that does not.
- Do not rush every ace and two to the foundations. A low card left in the tableau is somewhere to put the card you need next.
- Before you empty a column, know which king is going into it — an empty column with no king to fill it is dead space.
- On the daily, when you feel stuck, remember there is a way through: undo and try the branch you skipped.
Accessibility
Fully playable by touch, keyboard and screen reader, with no dragging: you tap a card and then tap where it goes, and every legal move is also listed as a full-size labelled button beneath the table. Cards are named in words ("queen of hearts"), never by colour alone. "Read the whole table" writes the entire position out in text — face-down cards are counted there and never named, because nobody can see them.