Indian Solitaire

Ten columns, one pass

How to play Indian Solitaire

Thirty cards go out as ten columns of three, with the bottom card of each column face down. The remaining seventy-four form a stock you draw one card at a time, once. Eight foundations are built up in suit from the aces.

The tableau rule is the reason to play it. A card goes on to a card one rank higher of any suit other than its own — so the 7♠ takes any of the six eights that are not spades, and is refused only by the two 8♠. It is the mirror image of Forty Thieves, where those two spades are the only cards that would accept it.

Moves are one card at a time, and an empty column takes anything.

One suit refused

The one suit that will refuse a card

Reading the ban

Indian Solitaire strategy

Get the aces and twos up immediately. With no way to stack a suit in the tableau, foundations are the only place a suit can assemble, and every low card left in a column is one you will have to dig for.

Use the third and fourth suits. The move you are most likely to miss is the same-colour one — a black seven on a black eight of the other suit. That is legal and it is often the better placement.

Dig the hidden ten early. Ten face-down cards across ten columns means every column has an unknown foundation, and the stock passes only once.

Keep a column empty if you can. An empty column takes anything and is the only way to retrieve a low card buried under three others.

When it stops moving

Where an easy-looking board stops moving

Reading the rule as alternating colour

Three of the four suits will accept a card, not two. A 7♠ goes on any red eight and also on the 8♣. Players arriving from an alternating-colour game habitually pass over that same-colour option, which throws away roughly a third of the moves available on every turn.

Forgetting the ban when building toward a foundation

The tableau refuses same-suit stacking, but the foundations insist on it. It is easy to assemble a useful-looking run and then find the card you need for a foundation is sitting under three cards of other suits, each needing its own destination.

Spending the single pass without uncovering the hidden ten

Seventy-four cards go past once. Each of the ten face-down cards flips only when the two cards above it leave, and until they do, a third of your column starts is unknown. Aim the early draws at columns you can dig, not at columns that merely accept a card.

A single pass

Is Indian Solitaire winnable?

Less often than the mobility suggests. Six legal landing cards per move makes the game feel open, but the same rule that gives you the moves prevents you ever building toward a foundation in the tableau.

Deals are usually lost late, when the stock is spent and the low cards of two or three suits are scattered under other suits with no way to gather them. We do not publish a win rate: the figure depends heavily on whether a version allows a redeal, and this one does not.

A scale of suit rules

A scale of suit restrictions

Four builders that differ mainly in how many cards will accept a given card. The fourth column counts them against every card of the right rank in that game's own pack — eight in a two-deck game, four in a single-deck one.

Indian sits second from the top for mobility and yet plays harder than Maria below it, because Maria's colour rule still lets a suit gather in one place and Indian's never does.