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Colours is a patience or card solitaire game which is played using a single pack of playing cards. It is in the same family as Sir Tommy, Strategy, and Calculation.
Colours is so called because of its emphasis on colour. The game is a variation of Lady Betty.
The cards are shuffled, then dealt out one by one onto the foundations or onto one of six waste piles, the top cards of which are available for building only on the foundations.
A two, a three, a four, and a five are needed to start the foundations. The deuce and the four should be of one colour (regardless of suit) and the trey and the five be of the other colour. Naturally, the colour of the first foundation card that turns up during dealing dictates the colours of the other cards. The foundations are built up by colour.
Dealing of cards from the stock continues until the stock runs out. The game is out when all of the cards are built onto the foundations, which should have an ace, a deuce, a trey, and a four on top.
Lady Betty is more like Sir Tommy in that it requires you to build the foundations by suit rather than colour, but like Colours it gives two extra tableau piles to work with.
Calculation is a solitaire card game played with a standard pack of 52 cards. It is part of the Sir Tommy family of patience games. It has its origin in France, where it is known as La Plus Belle.
Gargantua is a patience or solitaire card game that is a version of Klondike using two decks. It is also known as Double Klondike.
Napoleon at St Helena is a 2-deck patience or solitaire card game for one player. It is quite difficult to win, and luck-of-the-draw is a significant factor. The emperor Napoleon often played patience during his final exile to the island of St Helena, and this is said to be the version he probably played. Along with its variants, it is one of the most popular two-deck patiences or solitaires. The winning chances have been estimated as 1 in 10 games, with success typically dependent on the player's ability to clear one or more columns. The game is the progenitor of a large family of similar games, mostly with variations designed to make it easier to get out.
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.
Sir Tommy, also called Old Patience, is a patience or solitaire card game using a single pack of 52 playing cards. It is said to be the ancestor of all patiences, hence its alternative title. It is a half-open, planner type of patience game in the same family of card-building games as Calculation and Strategy. It is also known as Try Again and Numerica. Ednah Cheney (1869) calls it Solitaire and says "it is the simplest form of patience".
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.
Tournament is a patience or solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards shuffled together. It is a variant of the much older game of Napoleon's Flank or Nivernaise and was first known as Maréchal Saxe.
Persian Patience is a patience card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. The unusual feature of this game is the fact that the two decks are decks used in Piquet and Bezique, i.e. those that have the Deuces (twos), Treys (Threes), Fours, Fives, and Sixes removed.
Capricieuse is an old English patience played using two packs of playing cards. Some authors call it Capricious.
Colorado is a solitaire card game which is played using two decks of playing cards. It is a game of card building which belongs to the same family as games like Sir Tommy, Strategy, and Calculation. It is considered an easy game with 80% odds of being completed successfully.
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.
Alhambra is a patience or card solitaire game played using two packs of playing cards. Its unusual feature is akin to that of Crazy Quilt: the cards in the reserve are built either on the foundations or onto a waste pile.
Napoleon's Square is a patience or solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards. First described in a revised edition of Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Patience or Solitaire in the early 1900s, it is an easy variation of Napoleon at St Helena. It is not determined if Napoleon actually played this game, or any solitaire game named after him.
Puss in the Corner, also called Puss in Corner is a patience or solitaire card game that is played with a single pack of 52 playing cards. It is of the half-open, planner type and is a "thinly disguised variant of Sir Tommy," but with modifications and with the waste piles placed at the corners of the foundations, hence the name. It has the rare feature that the suits are built up in colour, not in suit.
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.
Duchess of Luynes is a patience or card solitaire game played with two packs of playing cards. It is a member of the Sir Tommy family. A unique feature of this game is the building of the reserve, which is not used until the entire stock runs out.
Fortress is a patience or solitaire card game which is played with a deck of playing cards, in which the entire deck is laid out. It is a member of the Castle family of solitaire games, but has two more tableau piles than Beleaguered Castle and the piles are shorter.
Imaginary Thirteen is a solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. Its gameplay makes it a two-deck version of Calculation and its name is taken from the fact that when a sum is over thirteen, thirteen is subtracted to get the value of the next card, with spot cards worth their face value, jacks eleven, queens twelve, and kings thirteen.
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.