How to Play

Yukon Solitaire is a Klondike-family one-player patience: all 52 cards deal into a 7-column tableau with no stock or waste. The signature rule lets you grab any face-up card together with every card stacked on top of it and move them as one group, regardless of their internal order.

Yukon Solitaire is a one-player patience game in the Klondike family, dealt entirely into a 7-column tableau with no stock or waste pile. Its signature rule allows you to move any face-up card together with everything sitting on top of it (in or out of sequence), which gives more tactical freedom than Klondike but also more ways to deadlock. A typical game takes 5–15 minutes and is winnable with careful planning.

Players

1 player. Yukon is strictly solitary.

Card Deck

One standard 52-card deck. All four suits (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades) and all thirteen ranks are used. No jokers. All 52 cards are dealt into the tableau at the start; there is no stock or waste pile at any point.

Objective

Build all 52 cards onto the four foundations, each foundation running from Ace up to King in a single suit: →, →, →, →.

Setup and Deal

1. Shuffle the 52-card deck.
2. Deal 7 columns with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 cards respectively (like Klondike). In every column the bottom card is face-up and the rest face-down, using 28 cards.2♠3♠4♠5♠6♠
3. Deal the remaining 24 cards face-up across columns 2–7, four extra face-up cards per column. After this, the final column layout holds 1 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 cards; the top five (bottom-most in the overlapping fan) of each column are face-up, the rest face-down. Column 1 has exactly one face-up card.
4. Leave four empty slots above the tableau for the foundations, one per suit. All cards begin in the tableau; foundations start empty and fill during play.

Gameplay

1. Group moves: Unlike Klondike, you may grab any face-up card together with every card stacked on top of it and move them as one group, even if those cards are not in rank/colour sequence among themselves. Only the destination rule needs to be satisfied; the internal order of the moving group is irrelevant.
2. Tableau building: The bottom card of the moving group must land on a card one rank higher and of the opposite colour (red onto black, black onto red). For example, you can move any group led by a red 7 onto a black 8; the cards above that red 7 in the group can be anything.
3. Foundation building: Only a single top card at a time may be moved to a foundation, and only if it is the next rank up in its own suit (Aces start a foundation, then 2, 3, … up to King). Cards on foundations are fixed; you may not move them back into the tableau.A♠K♠
4. Turning face-down cards: Whenever a face-down card becomes the new bottom card of a column (because everything above it has been moved), turn it face-up. It is now an ordinary available card.
5. Empty columns: An empty column may be filled only by a King, either a single King or a group of cards led by a King. Once a King occupies the slot, normal building resumes on top of it.
6. Stuck state: The game ends when no tableau or foundation move remains. If every foundation runs from Ace to King the game is a win; otherwise it is a loss.A♠K♠

Winning

You win when all four foundations are complete from Ace to King. Any other end state is a loss. Because the game is solitary, there are no tie-breakers and no partial-credit scoring.

Tips and Strategy

• Uncovering face-down cards is almost always the top priority: hidden cards are the only unknown in the game, so every face-down card flipped reduces uncertainty.
• The group-move freedom is a digging tool: shuffling a large group onto a valid base can expose the face-down cards underneath, even when the group itself is disorderly.
• Be selective about emptying a column. Empty columns are only useful for dropping a King (or a group headed by one), so save them for when you actually have a King that needs a home.
• Avoid locking Aces underneath long disorderly groups you cannot safely move. Once the deal is done, your main risk is deadlock around the Aces.

Variations

• Russian Solitaire: Build tableau columns by same suit instead of alternating colour. The most common variant and substantially harder.
• Alaska: Build tableau columns by same suit, but allow building up or down.
• Australian Patience: Yukon-style layout with slightly different building rules, often treated as a distinct game.
• Double Yukon: Use two decks (104 cards) with proportionally larger columns. Longer game, higher win rate because of the extra face-up cards.

Glossary

• Tableau: The seven columns of playing cards in front of the player.
• Foundation: One of four target piles, one per suit, built upward from Ace to King.A♠K♠
• Face-up / face-down card: A card whose face is visible / hidden. Face-down cards cannot be moved until the card above them leaves and they are turned face-up.
• Group (move): A block of cards taken together: any face-up card plus everything sitting on top of it.
• Alternating colour: Placing a red card on a black one or vice versa; the rule for building tableau columns.
• Stock / waste: Reserve piles used in Klondike; Yukon has neither.