Cruel is a solitaire card game based on Perseverance. Cruel became popular when it was published as video game for Microsoft Windows by Microsoft in 1990 as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows 3.0. [1] [2] [3] Cruel has since been remade for other platforms by several vendors.
Cruel uses a standard deck of 52 playing cards. The aces are placed face up to act as the foundations, upon which the suits will be built in sequence. The rest of the cards are shuffled and then dealt in 12 tableau piles, each with four cards.
The aim of the game is to place all the cards on the foundation piles, ordered from ace to king, using an unlimited number of moves.
For each move the player chooses any one of the top (exposed) cards from a tableau pile and places it either:
Only one card may be moved at a time.
At any time the player may have the tableau piles re-dealt, whereby they are collected together in sequence (from left to right, row by row) without shuffling and dealt in piles of four. This is activated by the "Deal" button.
The game is won when all the cards are on the foundation piles. The game is lost if no more moves are possible even if re-dealt.
Games of patience, or (card) solitaires as they are usually called in North America, have their own 'language' of specialised terms such as "building down", "packing", "foundations", "talon" and "tableau". Once learnt they are helpful in describing, succinctly and accurately, how the games are played. Patience games are usually for a single player, although a small number have been designed for two and, in rare cases, three or even four players. They are games of skill or chance or a combination of the two. There are three classes of patience grouped by object.
Klondike, also known as Canfield, is a card game for one player and the best known and most popular version of the patience or solitaire family, something which "defies explanation" as it has one of the lowest rates of success of any such game. Partly because of that, it has spawned numerous variants including Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk and Whitehead, as well as the American variants of the games, Agnes and Westcliff. The distinguishing feature of all variants is a triangular layout of the tableau, building in ascending sequence and packing in descending order.
The Carpet is a patience or solitaire game where the object is to discard all cards to the foundations where the aces are already dealt. It is a simple game relatively easy to get out more often than not.
Gargantua is a patience or solitaire card game that is a version of Klondike using two decks. It is also known as Double Klondike and as Jumbo.
Agnes is a patience or solitaire card game that emerged in England about the same time as Klondike appeared in the US. The classic version has the unusual feature of packing in colour, a feature it shares with Whitehead. By contrast, the later American variant appears to have been influenced by Klondike with packing is in alternate colours. The classic game has been described as the best single-pack patience yet invented.
British Square is a patience or solitaire card game which uses two decks of 52 playing cards each. It is a fan-type game in the style of La Belle Lucie. It has an unusual feature of switchback building whereby each foundation is first built up and then built down.
Mount Olympus is a solitaire card game using two decks of 52 playing cards. It is probably thus named because of the tableau's mountain shape and because if won, all the Kings and Queens are displayed, like the Greek gods and goddesses who were said to reside on Mount Olympus.
Matrimony is a patience or card solitaire game that uses two packs of 52 playing cards. It is a difficult game which depends mostly on luck and is sometimes mechanical.
Crescent is a solitaire card game played with two decks of playing cards mixed together. The game is so called because when the cards are dealt properly, the resulting piles should form a large arc or a crescent. An alternative and less common name for the game is La Demi-Lune.
Perseverance is a solitaire card game played with a deck of 52 playing cards. The reason for the name is not known, but likely originates in the fact that perseverance is necessary to succeed.
Westcliff is the name of two closely-related patience or card solitaire games of the simple packer type, both of which are played using a deck of 52 playing cards. One version is particularly easy to win, with odds of 9 in 10; the other is harder with odds closer to 1 in 4. The game has a variant, Easthaven.
Leoni's Own is a 19th century American card solitaire played with two decks of playing cards shuffled together. This game may have come from Austria, takes approximately 20 minutes and is described as medium regarding difficulty and also uses an ingenious method called weaving. It is often confused by card game book writers with Weaver's which has a similar mode of play but different rules and terminology.
Deuces or Twos is a patience or card solitaire game of English origin which is played with two packs of playing cards. It is so called because each foundation starts with a Deuce, or Two. It belongs to a family of card games that includes Busy Aces, which is derived in turn from Napoleon at St Helena.
Amazons is an old patience or card solitaire game which is played with a single deck of playing cards. The game is played with a Piquet pack minus the kings or a standard 52-card pack that has its twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, and kings removed. This game is named after the female-led tribe, the Amazons, because the queen is the highest card, and all queens are displayed if the game is won.
Four Seasons is a patience or card solitaire which is played with a single deck of playing cards. It is also known as Corner Card and Vanishing Cross, due to the arrangement of the foundations and the tableau respectively. Another alternate name is Cross Currents.
Four Corners, also known as Les Quatre Coins, Cornerstones, or Corner Patience, is a solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. It is so called because of the pile of four cards at the corners of the tableau.
Jubilee is the name given to two solitaire card games, both played with two decks of playing cards. Both games are so-called because they were created during the time of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. One of the games has an ornate layout, while the other is simpler and it belongs to the family of games which include Sir Tommy, Strategy, and Calculation.
Following is a patience or card solitaire that uses a single pack of playing cards. It is so called because a player has to follow a rotation of suits. It was first described in 1892 in Games of Patience by Mary Whitmore Jones and has since appeared in other books and software.
Algerian or Algerian Patience is a unique and difficult patience or card solitaire using two decks of playing cards. The object of the game is to build 8 foundations down from King to Ace or up from Ace to King in suit.
American Toad is a patience or card solitaire game played using two standard packs of playing cards. It is similar to Canfield except that the tableau builds down in suit, and a partial tableau stack cannot be moved, only the top card or entire stack. The object is to move all cards to the foundations.