Crescent Solitaire: play free online
Crescent Solitaire skips the part of a two-deck game where you hunt for Aces. All eight foundations already hold a card when the deal ends: four of them opened by an Ace, four by a King. There is nothing to draw and nothing face-down. The other 96 cards are on the table straight away, in sixteen piles of six.
What you do with them is narrow on purpose. Cards move one at a time, they never leave their suit, and a pile will take the next rank up or the next rank down, whichever you prefer. That last freedom is the whole game: a pile has no direction until you give it one, and you can change your mind on the next move.
How Crescent Solitaire is dealt
Two full decks, 104 cards:
- Foundations: eight, none of them empty. Each suit gets one that climbs from the Ace to the King and one that descends from the King to the Ace.
- Tableau: sixteen piles of six face-up cards, in two rows of eight. Only the card on top of a pile is in play.
- Reshuffles: three, on the Reshuffle button in the status bar under the board. They reorder the piles you already have; no new cards are ever dealt.
How to win at Crescent Solitaire
Every foundation is twelve cards short, because the deal gave it one already. Finish each of them at thirteen cards of a single suit and the game is won: all 104 cards off the table and in order.
How to play Crescent Solitaire: the rules
- Build up or down in the tableau, but stay in the suit. On the six of clubs goes either the five or the seven of clubs. Nothing from another suit will land there, whatever its rank.
- King and Ace join up on the tableau — never on a foundation. An Ace goes on a King and a King goes on an Ace, both ways. The climbing foundations still stop at the King, and the descending ones stop at the Ace.
- Nothing is drawn and nothing is hidden. There is no stock, no waste and no spare cell. Sixteen tableau tops, plus any foundation card you put there yourself, are the complete list of cards you can move at any moment.
- A pile has no fixed direction. Only its top card decides what it takes next, so a pile may legitimately read six, five, four, five, six of hearts.
- One card at a time, never two. Not even a run that is already in order.
- An emptied pile stays empty for good. Once the last card leaves a pile, that space will not accept another card for the rest of the game.
- The Ace or King the deal put on a foundation is locked there. Anything you add on top of it is not: if the table needs that card back, pull it down.
- Three reshuffles, and they do not actually shuffle. The button reads Reshuffle (3 left) and counts down. Each one takes the bottom card of every pile holding at least two cards and moves it to the top, leaving the rest of the order alone. That is up to sixteen new top cards in a single click.
Crescent Solitaire tips and strategy
- Emptying a pile is a loss, not a prize. Everywhere else a free space is a resource. Here it is one landing spot fewer for the rest of the deal, so think twice before you play a pile's last card.
- The Aces and Kings on the table are one of a kind. For every other rank, if the copy in front of you gets buried there is another somewhere. Not for these: the second Ace and second King of each suit went to the foundations at the deal. Keep the ones on the table free.
- Every card you place buries another one. The card that was on top of the destination pile disappears under yours. Sometimes the better move is the one you do not make.
- The free direction is what rescues you. Because a pile can go up as easily as down, you can bounce two neighboring ranks between two piles, digging one card deeper each time, until the card you were after comes up.
- Hold the reshuffles back. They are the only way to change the order inside a pile without playing its top card, and there are three. While a real move still exists on the table, play the move — the same discipline Addiction asks for with its own three.
- Some deals simply stop, and that is part of it. While a reshuffle remains you are never stuck. When they are gone and no top card pairs with anything, the deal is over. Until then, Undo reverses any number of moves, and the Hint button will find a play if one is there.
Forty Thieves is the other two-deck game with eight foundations, except it starts them all empty and gives you a stock to turn. Canfield wraps King to Ace too, and unlike here its foundations wrap as well, on a much smaller board fed by a reserve.