Face Up Solitaire
Added 02/2026
Face Up Solitaire: The Transparent Klondike Experience
By Martin Petroff
If you have ever lost a deeply invested game of Klondike simply because the final card you needed was buried face-down at the bottom of the longest column, you know exactly how frustrating hidden information can be. Face Up Solitaire (sometimes called Open Klondike) completely eliminates that blind luck. It takes the exact same beloved rules, mechanics, and tableau shape of standard Klondike, but flips a single, massive switch: every single card in the tableau is dealt face up from the very beginning. By revealing all the cards, the game transforms from a gamble into a deeply strategic, FreeCell-esque puzzle where you can plan your moves five steps in advance.
How to Play
If you know how to play standard Klondike, you already know how to play Face Up Solitaire. The learning curve is zero, but the strategic ceiling is incredibly high.
The Objective: Just like traditional Klondike, your goal is to move all 52 cards into the four "Foundation" piles at the top right of the board. You must build these piles by suit, starting with the Ace and ascending in order all the way up to the King.
The Setup (The Tableau):
Shuffle a standard 52-card deck.
Deal 28 cards into seven columns to form the familiar stair-step shape.
Column 1 gets 1 card, Column 2 gets 2 cards, Column 3 gets 3 cards, all the way up to Column 7, which gets 7 cards.
The Face Up Twist: Instead of dealing the bottom cards face down, every single card in the tableau is dealt completely face up, overlapping so you can see every value and suit.
The remaining 24 cards form your face-down Stockpile.
How to Play:
Building the Columns: You build down the tableau columns in descending order and alternating colors (for example, placing a black 10 onto a red Jack).
The "Buried" Rule: Even though you can see every card, you cannot magically pull a card out from the middle of a pile. You must still physically dig for it. You can only move a card if the cards resting on top of it form a valid, correctly stacked sequence.
Moving Stacks: You can move entire sequences of cards together, provided they are perfectly stacked in alternating colors and descending order.
Empty Columns: If you manage to completely clear one of your seven columns, you can only move a King (or a valid sequence starting with a King) into that empty space.
The Draw: When you run out of moves on the board, draw from the Stockpile to your Waste pile. You can play this using the relaxing "Draw 1" rules or the highly challenging "Draw 3" rules, depending on how much you want to sweat!