Solitaire — Klondike, the patience game most people mean by the word — is played with one deck: build the four foundations up by suit from ace to king, using seven columns you stack down in alternating colours. Free in your browser, with no download and no sign-up. Every deal here can be won, and you can race a friend on the same one.
Klondike is a patience game from the nineteenth century, named after the Canadian gold rush and spread across the world by the computers that came with it. Twenty-eight cards are dealt into seven columns, only the top one of each face up; the other twenty-four wait in the stock. You turn cards over, move them between columns a rank lower and the other colour each time, and put them up on the foundations until all fifty-two are there.
It looks like luck, but most of the game is choice: which card to free first, when to empty a column, and when not to put a card up yet. Some deals cannot be won at all whatever you do, and in most games of solitaire you never know whether yours was one of them.
Here you do know: before a deal reaches you, a solver in the game plays it out knowing every card, and only deals it can win are dealt. You still have to find the way without seeing under the face-down cards. Draw one card at a time or three, go through the stock as often as you like, take moves back, and keep your best time and fewest moves in this browser.
The layout, which card goes on which, why only a king fills an empty column, drawing one or three, and when the game is won.
Solitaire Rules: How to Play Klondike →Which cards to free first, when to hold a card back from the foundation, what to do with an empty column, and how to handle draw three.
How to Win at Solitaire: Klondike Tips →Open a table and send a friend the link. You play the same deal side by side, each at your own table: first to put all 52 cards up wins, or whoever has the most up after 5, 10 or 15 minutes.
Neither of you can see the other’s cards, since they are your cards too: you see how many they have up, how many they have turned over and how many moves they have made, and both tables are laid open at the end.
Not in general: some Klondike deals cannot be won however well you play. Here every deal can, because a solver plays it out knowing every card before it is dealt. You can still lose one by going the wrong way, since you cannot see under the face-down cards.
Draw one is the gentler game: every card in the stock comes round to you. With draw three only every third card is on top, so the stock deals you fewer choices and the game is harder. Pick either before the first move.
As often as you like. When the stock runs out, tap it and the waste turns back over into it in the same order.
Yes. Open a table, send your friend the link, and race on the same deal: first to put every card up, or the most cards up against the clock. You see how far your friend has got, but not their cards.
Yes, completely. It runs in your browser on a computer or a phone, with no download, no account and no sign-up.
Playing alone? Try Minesweeper, Nonograms or 2048 too.