Musical (card game)

Last updated

Musical is a patience or card solitaire using a single deck of 52 playing cards. [1] It is similar to another old game called Calculation except there is no tableau to play in and there is only one wastepile rather than four.

Contents

Names

The original and most common name of this game is Musical, Cheney (1869) says this is because "it is a very ingenious arrangement of numbers in two scales". [2] Alternative names are Betsy Ross, Fairest, Four Kings, Plus Belle and Quadruple Alliance. [3]

Rules

To begin the game, four cards are removed from the deck and placed in a row: an ace, a two, a three, and a four. Another four cards are placed in a row below those four cards: a two, a four, a six, and an eight. The table below shows how this is arranged:

A234
2468

The cards on the second row compose the foundations themselves, while the cards on the row above denote how the cards should be built on the foundations. The foundation placed under the ace starts with the two and it is built in ones. The foundation under the two starts with the four and it is built in twos, and so on. The table below shows how the foundations should be built:

Signs &
Foundations		A2345678910JQK
246810QA3579JK
369Q258JA4710K
48Q37J2610A59K

What makes this different from Calculation is how the cards in the stock are dealt. There is no tableau to place the cards from the stock. Instead, there is a wastepile where cards from the stock are placed. Cards from the stock are laid one at a time to the wastepile and can be placed on the foundations if possible and/or necessary. Only the top card of the wastepile is available for play and once the stock has run out, the cards on the wastepile are turned over and become the stock. This conversion from leftover cards on the wastepile to stock can be done twice in the game.

The game is won when every card from the stock is built on the foundations. The game is lost, however, if it ends with cards still on the wastepile that cannot be transferred to the foundations.

See also

Related Research Articles

Glossary of patience terms List of terms used in the card games known as patiences or solitaires

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.

Windmill (card game)

Windmill is a solitaire card game played with two decks of playing cards; it is a relatively mechanical game that isn't won that frequently. It is so called because of its distinctive initial layout, which resembles a windmill's sails. It is also known under the name Propeller.

Quadrille (patience)

Quadrille is the name of two different card games of the Patience or Solitaire type which are often confused. Both games use a pack of 52 playing cards. The earlier one was also known as La Française, the slightly later one as Captive Queens.

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.

Eagle Wing is a Patience game which is played with a deck of 52 playing cards. The game takes its name from the tableau which depicts an eagle-like bird spreading its wings in flight. It is somewhat related to the Canfield variant Storehouse.

Queen of Italy is a solitaire card game played with two decks of playing cards. It is a very strategic game that rewards careful planning, since the cards that potentially block the game are presented at the start, and with care it can be completed about half the number of attempts.

Duchess or Glenwood is a patience or solitaire card game which uses a deck of 52 playing cards. It has all four typical features of a traditional patience or solitaire game: a tableau, a reserve, a stock or talon and a wastepile. It is relatively easy to get out. It is a reserved packer, the same type of game as Canfield or Demon. Arnold describes it as "an interesting game with a fair chance of a favourable outcome."

Colorado (game)

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.

Odd and Even is a solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. It is so called because the building is done in twos, resulting in odd and even numbers.

Deuces is a solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. It is so called because each foundation starts with a "deuce", or two card. It also belongs to a family of card games which includes Busy Aces, which is derived from Forty Thieves.

The Plot is a Patience game which is played with two decks of playing cards.

Four Seasons is a solitaire card game 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.

British Constitution is a solitaire card game played with two decks of playing cards. It is a card game with a high chance in winning.

Fortune's Favor is a solitaire card game which is played with a deck of 52 playing cards. It is so-called probably because the chances of winning are completely on the player's side. It is a significantly simplified version of the game Busy Aces, a member of the Forty Thieves family of solitaire games.

Frog is a patience or solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. It belongs to the same family of solitaire games as Strategy, Sir Tommy, Calculation, and Puss in the Corner. Game-play is like Sir Tommy, but with two decks, a fifth waste pile, and a Canfield-like reserve.

Zodiac is a solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards shuffled together. An old game, it first appeared in Lady Adelaide Cadogan's book Illustrated Games of Patience. It is so-named probably because of its "globe"-shaped layout. It had many variations until its rules were standardized in 1914.

Patience (game)

Patience (Europe), card solitaire or solitaire (US/Canada), is a genre of card games whose common feature is that the aim is to arrange the cards in some systematic order or, in a few cases, to pair them off in order to discard them. Most are intended for play by a single player, but there are also "excellent games of patience for two or more players".

Following is a solitaire card game which uses a deck of playing cards. It is so called because a player has to follow a rotation of suits. It was first described in the book Games of Patience and has since seen appeared in other books and solitaire 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.

References

  1. ↑ Parodi, Francesca (2004-03-01). Big Book of Solitaire. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 29–. ISBN   9781402709449 . Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  2. ↑ Cheney (1869), pp. 33–35.
  3. ↑ Parlett (1979), pp. 43–44.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.