Sorting, not building

Montana Solitaire

Forty-eight cards in four rows of thirteen, with four gaps to shuffle them through. No piles, no foundations, no stock — just the question of which card to move into which gap, and only two redeals when the board seizes up.

Four rows of thirteen
Aces removed
Two redeals only
Sort, do not build

Ordered0/48

Gaps4

Redeals2

Moves0

Available when no gap move remains. Correct left-side runs stay locked.

Move cards into gaps to build each suit from 2 to king.

Aces out, gaps in

Montana Solitaire rules

Short rules, and one of them is easy to miss: a gap with a gap to its left does nothing.

Montana Solitaire setup and rules
Setup
Deck	One standard 52-card deck laid out as four rows of thirteen.
The aces	Removed. The four cells they occupied become the gaps.
Cards in play	Forty-eight, every one face up from the start.
Redeals	Two.
Moving a card
Where cards go	Into a gap, never anywhere else. The card leaves a new gap behind it.
A gap at the left edge	Accepts any 2, of any suit.
A gap elsewhere	Accepts the next rank up in the same suit as the card on its left.
A gap right of a king	Dead. Nothing can follow a king.
A gap right of another gap	Dead until the gap on its left is filled.
The redeal
When	Whenever you choose, twice in total.
What survives	Any correct run counting from the left edge of a row — a 2, then 3, then 4 of the same suit, and so on.
What is reshuffled	Everything else, dealt back into the unlocked cells.
Running out	When the second redeal is spent and no gap move remains, the deal is over.
Winning
Win condition	Each row holds one suit running 2 through king, with the gap at the right end.
Cards ordered	Forty-eight of forty-eight.

Sorting into rows

How to play Montana Solitaire

The whole deck goes out as a four by thirteen grid, then the aces are lifted out. The four cells where they lay become gaps, and gaps are the only thing that moves anything: a card can be slid into a gap, leaving a fresh gap where it came from.

A gap at the left edge of a row will take any 2. Everywhere else, a gap takes exactly one card — the next rank up, in the same suit, as whatever sits immediately to its left. A gap to the right of a king takes nothing at all, and neither does a gap with another gap on its left.

Get each row reading 2 through king in a single suit and you have won. There is no stock and no building; every card is visible from the first second, and the difficulty is entirely in the order you move them.

A gap is only worth as much as the card to its left. Four gaps sounds like four options, and often it is fewer: one sitting after a king is dead for the rest of the deal, and one with a gap to its left is waiting on another move entirely. Counting your genuinely live gaps before each move is the whole skill of the game.

What a gap takes

Which card each gap will take

Legal and illegal Montana moves
The move	Verdict	Why
A gap sits at the left end of a row. You move the 2♣ into it.	Legal	Left-edge gaps take any two, whatever the suit.
A gap sits at the left end of a row. You move the 5♣ into it.	Illegal	Only a two can begin a row.
The card left of a gap is the 7♦. You move the 8♦ in.	Legal	One rank up, same suit. The standard move.
The card left of a gap is the 7♦. You move the 8♥ in.	Illegal	Suits must match. Rank alone is not enough.
The card left of a gap is the K♠. You move the A♠ in.	Illegal	Nothing follows a king, and the aces are out of the deck anyway.
Two gaps sit side by side. You fill the right-hand one.	Illegal	A gap with a gap to its left has no card to follow.
You redeal with legal moves still on the board.	Legal	Both redeals are yours to spend when you judge best.

Same game, different setting

Montana and Gaps differ by one redeal

There is no hidden distinction to discover here: Montana and Gaps are the same puzzle with the same deal and the same rules. Montana allows two redeals; Gaps allows three. Both names are in common use, which is why both are here.

That one redeal is worth more than it sounds. Each redeal keeps only the runs already correct from the left edge, so a third attempt lands on a board that is usually further along than the second. If you find Montana unfairly tight, the same puzzle with an extra attempt is one click away — and if you find Gaps too soft, this is the version to play.

Working the redeals

Montana Solitaire strategy

Choose your twos deliberately. The suit of the two you place at a row's left edge decides which suit that row must become. Look at where the low cards of each suit sit before committing.

Work left to right. Only cards locked in a correct run from the left edge survive a redeal, so progress at the start of a row is permanent and progress in the middle is not.

Avoid making gaps behind kings. The card immediately right of a king is the most expensive one on the board to move, because the gap it leaves can never be used again this deal.

Hold the redeals. With only two, the value of each rises sharply the more cards you have locked. Exhaust every legal move first, including ones that seem to achieve nothing.

How the rows freeze

How a Montana board freezes

Spending a redeal at the first dead end

Two is a small allowance — one fewer than Gaps gives you — and an early redeal reshuffles a board that has barely any locked runs to protect. The later you redeal, the more cards are frozen in correct position and the fewer are thrown back into the pool. Push the position until genuinely nothing moves.

Filling a left-edge gap with the wrong two

Any two may start a row, which makes it feel like a free move. It is not: the suit you choose commits that entire row of thirteen cells. Look at where the 3, 4 and 5 of each suit are sitting before you decide which two goes where.

Creating gaps behind kings

Every card you move leaves a gap where it was. Move a card that sits immediately right of a king and you have created a permanently dead cell for the rest of that deal. Check what is to the left of a card before you take it.

Two redeals

Is Montana Solitaire winnable?

Not often. Two redeals is the tightest allowance of the three versions on this site, and the gap rules are unforgiving: half your gaps are typically dead at any moment, and a badly chosen two can waste an entire row.

Because everything is face up, the losses are entirely yours — you can always see the move you should have made. We do not publish a win rate: for this puzzle it depends almost entirely on the redeal count, which is the one thing that differs between Montana, Gaps and Addiction.

This version

Aces out, two redeals, locked runs preserved

One deck as four rows of thirteen; the four aces are removed, leaving four gaps.
A left-edge gap takes any 2; any other gap takes the next rank up in the suit on its left.
Gaps after a king, or after another gap, are unusable.
Two redeals, which preserve correct runs counted from the left edge.
Win by making each row one suit, 2 through king.

Undo is unlimited and unpenalised, with no timer or score. Montana is also published as Gaps and as Spaces; this site uses Montana for the two-redeal version.

Three gap games

The three gap-sorting versions

All three deal the same grid and use the same movement rule. They differ in where the gaps start and how many second chances you get.

Montana compared with Gaps and Addiction
Game	Where the gaps start	Redeals	How a redeal places the gaps
Montana	Where the four aces fell	2	Gaps placed after the locked runs
Gaps	Where the four aces fell	3	Gaps placed after the locked runs
Addiction	At the right end of every row	3	Gaps shuffled in with the cards

Addiction is the one with a genuinely different opening: its gaps sit at the right end of every row, so the first move of every deal looks the same.

Explore

More solitaire games

The same puzzle at three redeals, the version with a fixed opening, and a rank-driven classic.

Tested rules

How this solitaire game is checked

Game logic is implemented and tested by Brian Hamilton, then reviewed by Karan Hamilton for rule clarity, player flow, and correction notes.

How we make and test solitaire games