Thursday, August 6, 2026 · daily challenge
Solitairedaily — August 6, 2026
- Time
- 0:00
- Moves
- 0
- Deal
- #232340
About Solitaire
Klondike is the patience game that came with your first computer, and the reason "solitaire" and "Klondike" are used interchangeably by almost everyone. It predates the PC by a century: the name points at the Yukon gold rush of the late 1890s, where the game is supposed to have spread among prospectors, and printed rules for it appear in patience anthologies well before 1900. What turned it into the most-played card game on Earth was a decision by a Microsoft intern in 1989 to bundle a version with Windows 3.0, ostensibly to teach people how to drag a mouse. It worked rather better than intended.
The appeal is that a deal takes about six minutes and every single one is a fresh problem. Twenty-eight cards are on the table, twenty-one of them face-down, and twenty-four more are hidden in the stock. You are playing against incomplete information, and the whole game is a negotiation with it: each column you dig into reveals a card that changes what the rest of the board is worth. That is why two players given the same deal will diverge within four moves, and why a hand you lost can often be won on a replay.
Good Klondike is not about speed, it is about order of operations. The face-down cards are the only real currency in the game, so the strong player asks "which move turns a card over?" before anything else, and treats every other consideration as a tiebreak. The second discipline is restraint: sending an ace up is free, but sending a seven up too early can strand the black eights that needed somewhere to sit. The third is bookkeeping — knowing which red six you still need before you commit the black seven that would have held it.
This implementation deals from a numbered, reproducible shuffle, so deal #12345 is the same 52 cards for you and for anyone you send the number to. Both variants use the same shuffle, which means you can play a hand in draw-1 and then take the identical cards on in draw-3. Redeals are unlimited in both. Tap a card to pick it up along with the run beneath it, tap a destination to drop it; double-tap sends a card straight to its foundation; and once every card is face-up an Auto-finish button appears and plays the rest out. Undo goes back as far as you like, the clock pauses when you switch tabs, and a refresh puts you back on the same hand where you left it.
How to play Solitaire
- 1You start with seven tableau columns holding 1 to 7 cards. Only the last card of each column is face-up. The 24 cards left over form the stock in the top-left corner.
- 2Build the four foundations up by suit, starting with the ace: A, 2, 3 and so on to the king. Getting all 52 cards onto the foundations wins the game.
- 3Build the tableau columns down in alternating colours — a red six goes on a black seven, a black five on a red six. You can move a whole run at once as long as the run itself alternates correctly.
- 4Empty a column and only a king can move into it, either on its own or at the head of a run. This is the rule that makes kings so awkward and empty columns so valuable.
- 5Tap the stock to turn cards over. In draw-1 you get one card at a time; in draw-3 you get three, and only the top one of the three is playable. When the stock runs out, tap the empty space to turn the waste pile back over and go again — redeals are unlimited.
- 6Tap any face-up card to select it and everything sitting on it, then tap a highlighted destination to move the lot. Tap the same card again to change your mind.
- 7Double-tap a card to send it straight to its foundation if it is ready to go. Use Hint when you are stuck, and Undo as often as you like.
- 8When every card is face-up the Auto-finish button appears and plays the remaining cards to the foundations for you.
Solitaire strategy
- Work the face-down piles first. A move that turns a card over is almost always better than a move that does not, because it is the only way new information enters the game. When two moves both flip a card, take the one from the longest hidden pile — that column is the one most likely to be hiding what you need.
- Do not empty a column until you have a king ready to fill it. An empty column with no king available is a hole you cannot use and cannot fill, and it usually costs you the tempo you spent making it. Check the waste and the face-up tableau for an available king before you commit.
- Think before you auto-play the aces and twos. Those are always safe. Anything above a four is not: send the red seven up and the black eights in your tableau lose their landing spot. A rough rule is that a card is safe to bank once both foundations of the opposite colour have reached one rank below it.
- In draw-3, count the stock before your first pass. Play the pass once without taking anything, note which cards are visible at each offset, and you will know exactly which of the buried cards you can reach. Taking one card out of the waste shifts every later card by one, which is how you get at a card that was previously stuck between offsets.
- Prefer moving a run from a column with hidden cards over moving one from a column that is already fully face-up. Shifting cards between two open columns is usually a lateral move that just rearranges things you can already see.
- When you have a choice of which card to build on, keep your options open by leaving the higher-value gap. Placing a red jack on a black queen when there is another black queen available costs you nothing now and may cost you the game later — check whether the other queen has hidden cards underneath and use that one instead.
- If the hand stalls, undo back to the last branch point rather than starting a new deal. Klondike deals are decided by a handful of early decisions, and replaying the same deal from the point where you sent the wrong card up is how you actually learn the game.
Solitaire variants
Each plays differently enough to be worth its own run.
Draw 1
One card at a time from the stock. The friendlier, faster game.
Draw 3
Three cards at a time, top card playable. The classic challenge.
Solitaire daily challenge
One shared deal a day, the same for everyone. Win it and your streak goes up.
Solitaire — common questions
Is every deal of solitaire winnable?
No. With perfect play and full knowledge of the face-down cards, somewhere around 79% of Klondike deals are theoretically winnable — but a human playing normally, who cannot see the hidden cards, wins far fewer. Draw-1 with unlimited redeals typically lands in the 40 to 55% range for a decent player, and draw-3 is meaningfully lower. A lost hand is often just a hand you could not have known how to win.
What does draw 3 mean?
It is how many cards the stock turns over at a time. Draw-1 turns one card, so every card in the stock is available to you on every pass. Draw-3 turns three at once and only the top one of the three can be played, so two cards in every three are temporarily out of reach. You unstick them by playing a card off the waste, which shifts the whole cycle by one position. Draw-3 is the harder, more thoughtful game.
How many times can I go through the stock?
As many times as you like, in both variants. The original Windows game limited draw-3 to three passes, and we deliberately do not: a redeal limit turns a large share of otherwise playable hands into dead ends through no fault of the player, and the losses feel arbitrary rather than earned.
Can I move more than one card at a time?
Yes, as long as the cards you are moving already form a proper alternating descending run. Tap the highest card of the run you want and everything below it comes with it. Unlike FreeCell there is no limit tied to free cells — Klondike lets you move a run of any length, because you built it legally in the first place.
Why can only kings go into an empty column?
It is the rule that gives Klondike its tension. If any card could fill an empty column, columns would be free parking and most deals would collapse into a solved position. Restricting them to kings means an empty column is only worth something when you have a king to put in it, which is what makes the decision of when to empty one interesting.
Is the same deal number always the same cards?
Yes. Deals are generated by a seeded shuffle that depends only on the deal number, so #7412 is identical every time, on every device, forever. Share the number with a friend and you are both playing the same hand. Both draw variants use the same shuffle, so you can replay a deal you lost at draw-3 with the easier draw.
Does the timer or the move count affect anything?
Only your own bragging rights and the share line. There is no scoring system, no penalty for undoing, and nothing is uploaded anywhere — your progress, your streak on the daily deal and your stats live in your browser and never leave the device.