Klondike is a solitaire card game often known purely by the name of 'Solitaire'. It is probably the most well known solo card game.

Taking a standard 52-card deck of playing cards (without Jokers), deal one upturned card on the left of your playing area, then six downturned cards (from left to right). On top of the downturned cards, deal an upturned card on the left-most downturned pile, and downturned cards on the rest until all piles have an upturned card. Your pile should look like the following figure:

 O O O O +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | +-+ +-+ +-+ | | +-+ +-+ | | +-+ 

The four foundations (represented by O in the figure) are built up by suit from Ace to King, and the tableau piles can be built down by alternate colours, and partial or complete piles can be moved if they are built down by alternate colours also. Any empty piles can be filled with a King or a pile of cards with a King at the top.

There are different ways of dealing the remainder of the deck:

• Turning three cards at once to the waste, either allowing three passes through the deck or placing no limit on passes through the deck.
• Turning three cards at once, reversing the order of each group of three as the cards are dealt.
• Turning only one card at a time, but only passing through the deck once.

A screenshot of Windows (Klondike) Solitaire (5.0)

Microsoft has included Klondike as part of the Windows operating system since the 3.x series, starting from 1990. The game was developed by the (now former) Microsoft programmer Wes Cherry, who famously received no revenue from his endeavours; and the card deck itself was designed by Macintosh pioneer Susan Kare. GNOME and KDE have also provided corresponding applications (sol and kpat) since early versions.

It has been reported to be the most commonly played computer game in recent history, possibly ranking higher than even Tetris.

Strategies of play

Related topics

• Solitaire terminology

External links

• http://www.b3ta.com/interview/solitaire/ – Somewhat light-hearted interview with Wes Cherry, creator of Solitaire for Windows.