Golf Solitaire
Golf lays out seven columns of five face-up cards and asks you to clear every one of them. Play any card one rank above or below the top of the waste pile, chain as far as the run will carry you, then turn a new card from the stock — of which there are only sixteen, with no redeal. By default a King is a dead end, since nothing but a Queen follows it; turn King-Ace wrapping on and the ranks close into a loop, which changes every hole.
- Players
- 1
- Playing time
- 10 min
- Ages
- 8 to adult
- Face down
- None
How it's played
Every card is face up from the start, and one card at a time comes off onto the waste pile: anything one rank above or below whatever is showing there. Suit is never checked.
Seven columns of five. You can see all thirty-five cards — but you can only touch the last card of each column, which means seven of them.
One column, and only one card in it
The four above are perfectly visible and completely out of reach. They come into play in order, one at a time, as the card in front of them leaves — so a column is a queue, and you can read the whole queue in advance.
That is Golf's trade. Nothing is hidden, so nothing is a surprise; but nothing can be reordered either, and a card you need in the middle of a column is four moves away at best.
face up on the table, in seven columns of five
of them you can actually touch — one per column
in the stock, turned one at a time, no redeal
turned to the waste at the deal — 35 and 16 and 1 is the pack
The ranks
have ends.
A King has exactly one neighbour, and so does an Ace. Every other rank has two. Get a King onto the waste and the only card in the entire deck that will follow it is a Queen.
Ways off each rank. The two ends are worth half of everything between them.
Wrapping is off by default, and that is what separates Golf from the games it looks like. Turn it on and the line closes into a loop, the Ace and the King become neighbours, and both dead ends disappear at once. Leave it off and a King is where a run goes to die.
You need better than two a go
Clear all seven columns and you have won — whatever is left in the stock does not matter. But the stock is the only thing that gets you unstuck, and there is not much of it.
cards to clear, in seven columns
cards that will ever sit on the waste — one dealt, 16 in the stock
tableau cards you must average off every single one of them
Play one card per stock card and you clear 17 of 35 and lose with most of the board still standing. Every game of Golf is won in the runs — and with no wrapping, runs are exactly as long as the ranks let them be.
All seven columns empty
The stock and the waste are never looked at. Clear the board and it is over, however many cards you never turned.
Stock spent, nothing adjacent
Sixteen cards and no redeal. When the last one is turned and nothing showing is one away from it, that is the game.
Undo goes all the way
Which matters more here than in most solitaires: every card is visible from the start, so a lost game really was a route you picked.
If the room liked this
Classic Klondike Solitaire - host plays while others watch in real-time!
Tame eight legs of cards by building complete suit sequences from King to Ace.
Nothing is face down and almost every deal can be won. Four free cells hold cards aside while you unstack eight columns.