Easthaven Solitaire

Klondike meets Spider

How to play Easthaven Solitaire

Twenty-one cards go into seven columns of three, with only the bottom card of each turned up. That is fourteen hidden cards and a board far shallower than Klondike's staircase — every column is the same shallow depth, and every one of them has exactly two cards to dig out.

Building and foundations are pure Klondike: down by rank in alternating colours, ordered runs move together, empty columns take a king, and four foundations climb by suit from ace to king.

The stock is pure Spider. There is no waste pile and nothing to draw one card at a time. Instead you deal a whole row — one card face up onto every column simultaneously — and you get to do that five times.

Column by column

What Easthaven columns accept

Between two games

Easthaven Solitaire strategy

Keep the board flat. Every deal thickens all seven columns at once, so the depth you are carrying when you press deal is the depth you have to dig back out of. A board of short piles absorbs a row; a board with two long columns does not.

Use your kings before dealing. A space is worth more here than in Klondike because there is no waste pile to park anything in — and the next row will close it. If a king can move, move it first.

Be slower with foundations than in Klondike. With no waste and only five deals, the tableau is almost your entire working area, and a 6 sent up early is a 5 with nowhere to land. Aces and twos always; past that, check what the tableau still wants.

Count the deals. Five is not many, and each one is irreversible. Knowing you have two left changes whether it is worth breaking up a good column to chase a reveal.

Three recurring errors

Where Easthaven deals get away

Dealing a row over an empty column

The deal is allowed with a column open, which is a genuine convenience — and a trap. A space is the only place a stranded king can go, and the row will fill it with whatever comes next. If you have a king ready to move, move it before you deal.

Treating the deal as free because it is unlimited in timing

You may deal whenever you want, but only five times. Each deal buries the top card of all seven columns at once, including the ones you had just arranged. Deal when you have loose cards and short piles, not when the board is finally in order.

Digging one column while the others thicken

Every deal adds a card to all seven, so the columns you are ignoring are getting deeper whether you look at them or not. Working across the board keeps the piles shallow enough that a row deal is survivable.

Five deals, then nothing

Is Easthaven Solitaire winnable?

Less often than Klondike. The alternating-colour rules are identical, but Klondike's draw-one stock lets you see cards individually and cycle them repeatedly, while Easthaven gives you five blind rows and nothing else. There is no waste pile to hold a card in and no second pass.

The shallow opening helps — fourteen hidden cards spread evenly is much friendlier than Klondike's twenty-one stacked into a staircase — but the forced deals more than take that back. We do not publish a figure, since Easthaven versions differ on the deal count and on whether spaces are king-only.

Its two parents

Where Easthaven sits between its parents

Spiderette is the closest thing to Easthaven's mirror image: the same one-deck row-deal shape, but you build runs in the tableau instead of foundations, and the empty-column restriction comes back.