Well (solitaire)

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Well is a solitaire card game played with a deck of 52 playing cards. Its layout and rules are similar to Beleaguered Castle. This game is nearly always solvable, but many deals prove very difficult to win.

Rules

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First, the player removes the aces from the deck and aligns them vertically without overlapping them to form the foundations. An additional card-sized empty place below the aces is designated as well. Then cards are first dealt to the left and right of the aces, forming eight main rows of five overlapping cards each. The remaining eight cards are dealt to the left and right of the well, forming two auxiliary rows of four overlapping cards each. The entire layout resembles "wings" on either side of the foundations and the well.

The top card of each row (the cards that are exposed) is available for play either on the foundations or on any other main row. Cards are built by suit either up or down in sequence. Cards can't be put in the auxiliary row. Once a row becomes empty, it can be filled by any card.

As a last resort, a single card can be played on the well, but it would not be available to play again until one of the auxiliary rows has been emptied. Empty well can be reused.

The game is won when all of the cards are built onto the foundations. [1]

A variation to these rules allows the foundations to be only built up to kings and not down.

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References

  1. "Patience". Nauka i Zhizn (In Russian) (12): 128–129. 1966.