Types of Solitaire Games

Solitaire is not a single game — it is a genre. There are hundreds of documented solitaire variants, and the term covers everything from gentle card-sorting puzzles to brutal combinatorial challenges where expert players still lose more often than they win. What these games share is a single-player format and a deck of cards. Beyond that, they vary widely in structure, strategy, and difficulty.

I’ve spent years building and playing all of these variants, and each one genuinely scratches a different itch. This guide covers 12 well-known types of solitaire games, organized by their core mechanic. Eight of them you can play free online at Card & Puzzle right now. The remaining four round out the picture and give context for where the popular variants sit within the broader solitaire landscape.

Tableau-Building Games

Tableau-building solitaire games share a common core: cards are arranged in columns (the tableau), and the primary activity is rearranging those columns into ordered sequences before sending cards to foundation piles. This is the most populated category and includes the most recognizable names in the genre.

Klondike

Klondike Solitaire is the game most people picture when they hear the word “solitaire.” The version that shipped with Windows in 1990 introduced an entire generation to the format. Seven tableau columns hold face-down cards with a single face-up card on top of each. You build descending sequences in alternating colors, flip hidden cards as you uncover them, and draw from a stock pile when the tableau runs dry.

The elegance of Klondike is how it balances luck and skill. Some deals are unwinnable regardless of play, but poor play will lose many winnable deals, and that tension keeps players coming back.

• Difficulty: Medium (Turn 1) / Hard (Turn 3)
• Play it: Klondike Solitaire — Turn 1 Classic / Turn 3 Challenge
• Learn it: Klondike Solitaire Guide

Spider

Spider Solitaire uses two full decks across ten tableau columns, and the goal is to build complete King-to-Ace runs in a single suit, which then auto-remove to the foundation. What makes Spider distinctive is the suit-matching rule in multi-suit games: you can stack any descending sequence on the tableau, but only same-suit sequences can be moved as a unit. Mixed sequences clog the board and block progress.

The three difficulty tiers — 1 suit, 2 suits, and 4 suits — make Spider one of the few solitaire games with a built-in difficulty ladder, which is why it remains enormously popular. The 2-suit version sits between those two extremes: harder than 1-suit because mixed sequences can no longer move as a block, but still more forgiving than the full 4-suit challenge.

• Difficulty: Easy (1 suit) / Hard (4 suits)
• Play it: Spider Solitaire
• Learn it: Spider Solitaire Guide

FreeCell

FreeCell Solitaire is the game where almost every deal is winnable — of the standard numbered deals that have been exhaustively analyzed, only one (Deal #11982) is confirmed unsolvable. The key mechanic is four “free cells” in the upper left: temporary parking spots for individual cards. You can see every card from the moment the game starts, so FreeCell is pure strategy with no hidden information.

This transparency is both FreeCell’s appeal and its source of frustration. When you lose a FreeCell game, it is almost always your fault. There is nowhere to hide behind bad luck.

• Difficulty: Medium (most deals solvable, but solutions require planning)
• Play it: FreeCell Solitaire
• Learn it: FreeCell Solitaire Guide

Yukon

Yukon Solitaire looks like Klondike at first glance — seven columns, alternating-color descending sequences, foundation piles — but it has one rule change that turns the game inside out. In Yukon, you can move any face-up card regardless of where it sits in a column, even if it is buried beneath a disordered pile of other cards. Those buried cards come along for the ride.

This freedom sounds like it should make Yukon easier. It does not. Without the discipline of Klondike’s strict sequence movement rules, the tableau becomes chaotic quickly, and cleaning up that chaos requires careful planning over many moves.

• Difficulty: Hard
• Play it: Yukon Solitaire
• Learn it: Yukon Solitaire Guide

Matching and Pairing Games

This category replaces tableau building with a different core mechanic: removing cards by matching them according to a numerical rule. The tableau structure is still present, but strategy centers on which pairs to remove and in what order.

Pyramid

Pyramid Solitaire arranges 28 cards face-up in a triangular pyramid shape, with the remaining 24 cards split between a stock pile and an initial waste card. You remove cards by pairing any two exposed cards (or one exposed card and the current waste card) that sum to 13. Kings count as 13 and remove alone. The pyramid itself is the obstacle: a card is only accessible once all cards overlapping it from the row below have been cleared.

The hidden cruelty of Pyramid is that many deals are genuinely unwinnable, and you often will not know it until you have already invested several minutes.

• Difficulty: Hard
• Play it: Pyramid Solitaire
• Learn it: Pyramid Solitaire Guide

Golf

Golf Solitaire takes its name from the scoring metaphor: your goal is to clear as many cards as possible with as few stock draws as possible, minimizing your “strokes.” Seven tableau columns of five cards each are laid out face up. You play the bottom card of any column onto the waste pile if it is one rank higher or lower than the waste card, regardless of suit. In our version, Aces are flexible — they connect the high and low ends of the rank sequence, so a Two can play onto an Ace and a Queen can play onto a King.

Golf is fast, approachable, and surprisingly dependent on sequencing. A single good card in the waste position can trigger a cascade that clears half the board in seconds.

• Difficulty: Easy-Medium
• Play it: Golf Solitaire
• Learn it: Golf Solitaire Guide

TriPeaks

TriPeaks Solitaire arranges 28 cards into three overlapping pyramid-shaped peaks. Like Golf, you clear cards by playing them onto a waste pile in sequential order — one rank up or down, any suit. In this implementation, Kings and Aces are consecutive, so a King can play onto an Ace and vice versa. The three-peak structure also creates more simultaneous options at the board edge than Golf’s flat columns.

TriPeaks is the most beginner-friendly game in this category and one of the most forgiving solitaire games overall. The high win rate and the satisfying chain-clearing runs make it ideal for casual play.

• Difficulty: Easy
• Play it: TriPeaks Solitaire
• Learn it: TriPeaks Solitaire Guide

Gap-Based Games

Gap solitaire games replace the usual “build a sequence on a tableau column” mechanic with something more spatial: cards are arranged in a grid, gaps (empty cells) exist in that grid, and you slide cards into gaps according to placement rules. The goal is to achieve a specific ordered arrangement.

Addiction 7

Addiction 7 Solitaire (a condensed variant of the classic Addiction/Montana format) uses only the Ace through Seven of each suit — 28 cards arranged in a 4×7 grid. All four Aces are removed at the start, creating the initial gaps. You fill gaps by placing a card that is exactly one rank higher than the card immediately to its left and of the same suit. Twos can start any row from the leftmost position. You have two shuffles that randomize all unplaced cards, giving you a second or third attempt at a better arrangement.

The design elegance is how frequently you maneuver yourself into a locked position — a gap sits to the right of a Seven and cannot accept anything, blocking that entire row until a shuffle resets things.

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Play it: Addiction 7 Solitaire
• Learn it: Addiction 7 Solitaire Guide

Other Notable Solitaire Variants

The following four games are widely played and help illustrate how broad the solitaire genre is. Card & Puzzle does not currently offer these, but they belong in any complete survey of solitaire types.

Canfield — Originally a gambling game played in casinos in the late 1800s, Canfield deals 13 cards to a single reserve pile and builds the tableau in groups of four cards of the same rank. The foundation starting rank is random, which gives the game an unusual feel. Win rates range from about 3% under strict casino rules to 30–35% with relaxed home rules.

Forty Thieves — One of the classic two-deck games, Forty Thieves deals 40 cards into ten columns and requires building same-suit ascending sequences. Only the top card of each column can be moved at a time, and there is a single draw-one stock. It is notoriously difficult, with win rates below 10% for most players.

Scorpion — Scorpion is a tableau-building game using a single deck that shares DNA with both Klondike and Spider. The goal is to build same-suit descending sequences from King to Ace entirely within the tableau, with no separate foundation piles. Cards can be moved in sequence even if not fully packed, which creates interesting mid-game decisions.

Clock — A pure luck game with no player decisions, Clock Solitaire arranges all 52 cards face-down in thirteen piles arranged like a clock face. Cards are flipped and placed under their matching clock position. The game is won if the fourth King is turned over last. The outcome is determined entirely by the initial shuffle.

Quick Comparison Table

How to Choose the Right Solitaire Game

If you are new to solitaire, start with TriPeaks to get comfortable with card mechanics, then move to Klondike Turn 1 to learn the tableau-building patterns that underpin most other variants. For a full progression guide — including where each game sits on the difficulty scale and what order to tackle them in — see the solitaire difficulty ranking.

The History of Solitaire Variants

Solitaire games have been documented in card-playing literature since at least the late 18th century in Northern Europe. The word “patience” — the British term for solitaire — appears in French and German card manuals from the 1780s and 1790s. Early variants like La Belle Lucie and Klondike spread through Europe and eventually to North America during the 19th century gold rush era, which is likely how Klondike got its name.

The explosion of personal computing in the late 1980s and early 1990s created the second great wave of solitaire popularity. Microsoft’s inclusion of Klondike Solitaire in Windows 3.0 (1990) introduced card solitaire to an audience of millions who had never played it on paper. FreeCell, added in Windows 3.1, developed its own dedicated following. Spider Solitaire arrived with Windows Me and XP in 2000–2001.

The mobile era brought a third wave, with TriPeaks, Golf, and Pyramid gaining popularity as compact games well suited to touch interfaces. Today, solitaire games collectively represent one of the most-played casual game categories globally, and the genre continues to expand with new variants that push the underlying mechanics in fresh directions.