The table
- Column
- One of the seven piles in the middle of the table, where cards are built down in alternating colors. The deal gives the first column one card and the seventh column seven.
- Tableau
- The rule-book name for the seven columns taken together. It is French for picture, and patience books use it for any layout of cards.
- Foundation
- One of the four piles at the top right, one for each suit, built up from Ace to King. The deal is won when all 52 cards are on the foundations.
- Stock
- The face-down pile at the top left that holds the 24 cards left over after the columns are dealt. Clicking it turns cards onto the waste.
- Waste
- The face-up pile beside the stock where drawn cards land. Only its top card can be played.
- Talon
- An older word that some books use for the waste, some for the stock and some for both. When a rule book says talon, check which pile it means.
- Reserve
- A pile of cards set aside at the start of some solitaires and fed into play one at a time. Klondike has none. The thirteen-card reserve is the mark of the game Americans call Canfield.
- Face-down card
- A card in a column that hasn’t been turned over yet. A new deal has 21 of them, and a card turns over as soon as everything on top of it has moved away.
Moves
- Build
- To place a card on another by the rule of the pile. Columns build down in alternating colors, such as a red 9 on a black 10, and foundations build up in one suit.
- Packing
- A British rule-book word for building on the columns, as distinct from building on the foundations.
- Run
- A string of face-up cards in a column, in descending order and alternating colors. You can move a whole run, or the lower part of one, as long as its top card fits where it lands.
- Available card
- A card that the rules allow you to move right now because nothing is blocking it. In Klondike these are the face-up cards in the columns, the top of the waste and the top of each foundation.
- Empty column
- A column with no cards left in it. Only a King, or a run that starts with a King, can go there. Older books call it a space or a lane.
- Home
- A card goes home when it is played to its foundation. Double-clicking a card sends it home if it can go.
- Worrying back
- Moving the top card of a foundation back down onto a column. LarkSpark allows it, and it sometimes opens a landing spot that nothing else can.
- Twin
- The other card of the same rank and color, such as the two black 6s. Twins compete for the same spots, and part of a run can often move across onto the twin of the card it sits on.
- Landing spot
- An open card in a column that another card could be placed on. Every card but a King has two possible landing spots, so they are worth counting before you fill one.
- Safe card
- A card that can go home without any cost, because both of the cards that could sit on it in a column are already on the foundations.
Going through the stock
- Draw One
- The mode in which each click on the stock turns one card onto the waste, so every stock card can be reached on every pass. It is the gentler game.
- Draw Three
- The mode in which each click turns three cards onto the waste and only the top one can be played. Playing a card shifts every group of three after it on the next pass.
- Pass
- One trip through the stock from its first card to its last. LarkSpark lets you make as many passes as you like.
- Redeal
- Turning the waste back over to form a new stock once the stock runs out. Some rule sets limit the number of redeals, and some old ones allow none.
Deals, tools and records
- Winnable deal
- A deal for which at least one sequence of legal moves puts all 52 cards on the foundations. Every deal LarkSpark gives you is one.
- Solver
- A program that searches a deal for a winning line of play. LarkSpark runs one on each deal before it reaches you, in the mode you are playing.
- Undo
- Takes back your last move. It reaches back up to 60 moves, and the U key does the same thing.
- Hint
- Shows one legal move: a card that can go home, then a move between columns, then a draw. It doesn’t look ahead, so treat it as a reminder and not as advice. The H key shows it.
- Auto-complete
- Plays out the rest of the game for you, the stock included. It is offered once every card in the columns is face up.
- Replay this deal
- A menu choice that restarts the same cards from the beginning, so you can try a deal again knowing where everything is.
- Records
- What LarkSpark keeps in place of a score: your best time, your fewest moves and your wins, separately for Draw One and Draw Three. For fewest moves, every card move counts, and so does every draw and every turn of the waste back into the stock.
Names for the game
- Patience
- The older name, still usual in Britain, for any card game played by one person. It has been used in print for such games since the 1790s.
- Solitaire
- The North American name for card games for one. Used alone it usually means Klondike.
- Klondike
- The game on this site: seven columns, four foundations, a stock and a waste. The name was in print by 1907 and is tied to the Yukon gold rush of the late 1890s, though nobody knows who chose it.
- Canfield
- A name that has meant two games. Early American books used it for Klondike, and it is now the usual American name for a different solitaire with a thirteen-card reserve.
- Demon
- The British name for the reserve game Americans call Canfield. Some families and some old books have used it for Klondike as well.
- Thoughtful solitaire
- Klondike played with the position of every card known from the start. Researchers use it to measure how many deals can be won at all.
- Vegas scoring
- A way of scoring found in many computer versions, taken from the old gambling game: the deal costs 52 and each card on a foundation pays 5. LarkSpark doesn’t use it.