Yukon Solitaire rules and how to play

Yukon Solitaire is a one-deck patience game that rewards planning and gives you a great deal of freedom to move cards around. If you enjoy Klondike but sometimes wish you could move a stubborn card that is buried under others, Yukon is for you. You can play Yukon Solitaire here whenever you would like to follow along, and this guide will walk you through everything at an unhurried pace.

The one idea that makes Yukon special is this: you may pick up any face-up card along with every card sitting on top of it, even when those cards are not in a neat run. That single rule opens up the whole game. Do not worry if that sounds unusual right now. By the end of this page it will feel natural.

What you need

Yukon uses a single standard deck of 52 cards. There are no jokers. Every card is dealt onto the table at the start, so there is no separate pile to draw from during play. That means everything you need is in front of you from the very first move, which many players find calming. Your goal is to build four foundation piles, one for each suit, each running from Ace up to King.

The layout

The cards are dealt into seven columns, called the tableau. The deal is similar to Klondike, but with extra cards added.

That accounts for all 52 cards. Notice that every column except the first shows five face-up cards from the start. This is why Yukon feels so open compared with other games: you can see a lot of the deck right away.

Above the tableau sit four empty foundation spaces. These begin empty and are where you will build your winning piles.

How to play

You win Yukon by moving all 52 cards up to the four foundations. Each foundation is built by suit, in order, starting with an Ace. So a hearts foundation goes Ace, 2, 3, 4, and onward up to the King of hearts. You may move an Ace to a foundation as soon as it is free to move, and then add the 2 of that suit, then the 3, and so on.

Most of your work happens down in the tableau, where you rearrange cards to uncover the ones you need. Within the tableau you build downward in alternating colors. “Downward” means each card is one rank lower than the card it lands on. “Alternating colors” means a red card must go on a black card, and a black card on a red card. For example, you may place a red 9 onto a black 10, and then a black 8 onto that red 9.

When you move a card away and it leaves a face-down card exposed at the bottom of a column, that hidden card is turned face up and becomes available. Uncovering these buried cards is the heart of the game.

Moving cards

Here is the rule that sets Yukon apart. You may pick up any face-up card in the tableau together with all the cards resting on top of it, and move the whole group at once. The cards on top do not need to be in sequence or in matching colors. The only card that must obey the building rule is the one at the bottom of the group you are lifting: it has to land on a card that is one higher and of the opposite color.

So imagine a column ends with a black 7, and stacked messily on top of that 7 are a red King, a black 4, and a red 10, in no particular order. If you have a red 8 available somewhere, you may move that black 7, and the whole jumble comes with it, landing neatly under your red 8. The messy cards travel along for the ride.

Empty columns are valuable. Once a column is completely cleared, only a King, or a group headed by a King, may be moved into that empty space. Because a King is the highest card and nothing can be built above it, choosing which King to place there is an important decision.

Winning and losing

You win when all four foundations are complete from Ace to King. Not every deal can be solved, but a large majority can with careful play, so a game that stalls is usually a sign that a better move order existed earlier rather than bad luck. There is no penalty for taking your time, and no clock forcing your hand.

A short worked example

Suppose column 3 shows, from the bottom up, a black 6 with a red 5 and a stray black Queen piled on it. Column 5 ends in a red 7. You move the black 6, and the red 5 and black Queen ride along, landing under the red 7. That move might expose a face-down card at the bottom of column 3, which you turn over to reveal, say, an Ace of spades. You send that Ace straight up to start its foundation. One tidy sequence has both uncovered a hidden card and begun a foundation.

Getting started

If you are new to this, begin gently. Turn over face-down cards whenever you safely can, because a hidden card is a card you cannot use. Send Aces and 2s to the foundations early, but otherwise be in no rush to play cards upward; you often need them in the tableau to keep building. Take each move one at a time. When you are ready to sharpen your play, our companion Yukon strategy guide explains which cards to free first and how to use empty columns well.

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