Crescent Solitaire Rules

Crescent Solitaire is a fairly simple solitaire game, but still has some features that set it apart from other solitaires, like an unusually high number of piles, being played with two whole decks, and a shuffling function. The game has only two types of piles, Tableaus and Foundations, and the objective is to move all cards from the tableaus onto the foundations.

Tableaus

There are 16 tableau piles in Crescent solitaire and they are laid out in a crescent shape. Each tableau pile starts with 6 cards in it. All cards are face up, so you can peek behind the top card by dragging it away and then releasing it. You can move cards between the tableaus (only 1 at a time), you may drop a card onto a tableau if it's the same suit as the top card of the tableau, and it's rank is one higher or one lower than the top card rank. So you could drop an 8 of clubs onto a 7 of clubs, or an 8 of clubs onto a 9 of clubs. The cards in the tableaus can also wrap around, you could put a king of clubs, then an ace of clubs, then a 2 of clubs. Basically you can use the tableaus to gather cards together until you can move them onto the Foundations.

When you can't use any of the top cards on any of the tableau piles you can use the Shuffle button. The classic Crescent Solitaire game has only 3 shuffles per game, but we found out that having that rule meant that almost no one managed to win any games! So we have three game modes, Easy (9 shuffles), Medium (6 shuffles), and Hard (3 shuffles). You can select between them by clicking on the Options link. When you click Shuffle the game will take the bottom card from each tableau pile and put it on top of the pile so you can get to it. (So it's not really a shuffle, it's just moving the bottom card to the top).

Foundations

There are two rows of foundations, four foundations in each row, so a total of eight foundation piles. The top row has four foundations and they start with Kings in them. In this top row you build down, so you can put a queen onto a king of the same suit, jack onto the queen and so on, all the way down to the ace. The bottom row starts with aces and there you build up, so you put a 2 onto an ace, a 3 onto a 2 and so on up to a King. Once you've moved all cards from the tableaus and placed them in the right order onto the foundations you win the game.

You are allowed to move cards back from the foundations onto the tableaus if it is helpful for you, but you are not allowed to remove the starting cards, the kings and aces, from the foundation piles.

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