Solitaire card games/Accordion

Packs: One

Alternative names: Idle Year, Tower of Babel, Methuselah
Space: Medium
Level: Medium
Chances of winning: About 1 in 100 [1]

The object of this game is to compress the entire deck into one pile like an accordion. hence its name.
Deal out cards, one by one, in a row, suppose the first five cards you deal are:

Look for any cards of the same suit or rank either one or three to the left of a card. In the above example, you can move the 2♦ onto the 3♦ as they are of the same suit and next to each other. You can then move the 6♦ onto the 6♠ as the latter is 3 spaces to the left of the former and they are of the same rank. Finally, the 2♦ can be placed on the 6♦ as they are of the same suit. Once you have run out of moves, deal more cards, one by one, until the stock is exhausted. The game is won when all cards are compressed into one pile. But since achieving this is next to impossible when cards are dealt one at a time, it is sometimes considered a win when there are five piles or less at the end of the game.


Variations edit

The variation described above in which the cards are laid out one by one, while practical, it also allows an element of surprise as the player does not know the next card to be dealt until all possible plays are exhausted.

In another variant, the cards are spread out in one line. While this variant allows for some tactics to be applied, it can prove to be cumbersome when played with a real deck. For this variant, before you start playing, locate 4 cards with the same rank that are close and near the end of the layout. Try to get the 4 cards to the end of the layout. You do not want to cover them with other cards until the end of your game.

References edit

  1. Moyse, Alphonse (2013). 150 Ways to Play Solitaire - Complete with Layouts for Playing. Read Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4474-8085-3.