Yukon Solitaire: all 52 cards on the table, no stock. Move any face-up card with the cards on top of it and build four foundations.
What is Yukon Solitaire?
Yukon Solitaire is a one-deck solitaire game in which all 52 cards are dealt into seven columns at the start and you build four foundations by suit from Ace to King. It looks like Klondike, with the same alternating-colour building, but there is no stock, and you may move any face-up card together with everything on top of it, in order or not.
That one rule changes the game. You are never waiting for a card to come out of the deck: every card is already on the table, and the work is digging out the 21 face-down ones. Many deals can be won with careful play, and some cannot.
How to play Yukon Solitaire
The deal: the first column holds a single face-up card. Columns two to seven hold one to six face-down cards, each with five face-up cards on top. That makes 21 face-down cards and 31 face-up ones.
Building in the columns: a card goes onto a card one rank higher of the other colour, so a red 6 goes on a black 7. You may pick up any face-up card in a column, and every card lying on top of it comes along, even if those cards are mixed up. Only the card you pick up has to fit the target.
Empty columns take only a King, again with any cards that sit on top of it. When the last face-up card leaves a face-down card, that card turns up by itself.
Foundations: each one starts with an Ace and grows by suit up to the King. Only single cards go to a foundation. A card can come back down from a foundation onto a column if it fits the colour rule. You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations. Once every card in every column is face up and each column runs from high to low, an Auto-finish button appears and plays the rest for you.
Yukon Solitaire strategy
Uncover first. The 21 face-down cards are what loses deals. To turn one over you need to move the face-up card lying directly on it, with everything above. So for each column, look at that one card and ask where it could go. The right-hand columns hide up to six cards each and deserve attention early.
Read moves from the bottom of the group. Since the cards on top come along anyway, a group move is legal whenever its lowest card fits. A big, messy group is no harder to move than a single card. Use this to dig: grab a card halfway down a column if that frees what is below it.
Plan the Kings. Only a King can fill an empty column, and Kings often sit on top of face-down cards. Moving such a King, with its pile, into an empty column frees a whole column of cards in one move. Before you empty a column, decide which King goes there.
Get the Aces and 2s out. A low card buried under face-down cards blocks a whole suit. Once the Aces are up, play low cards to the foundations freely. With higher cards, keep them in the columns while they are still useful as places to build.
Use foundation cards as a reserve. Because a card can come back down from a foundation, a 5 already on its pile can drop back to hold a 4 of the other colour when you need one.
Try lines with undo. With no stock and every face-up card in view, Yukon rewards looking several moves ahead. Undo has no limit, so test a line and step back if it gets stuck.
Yukon rules and related games
Our Yukon has one rule set and no menu options: seven columns, no stock, Kings only in empty columns, and alternating colours in the columns.
Other variants exist. Russian Solitaire uses the same deal and the same free group moves but builds down by suit, which is much harder. If you prefer a game with a stock, Klondike Solitaire on Hevagames uses the same layout idea with a draw pile and ordered runs.
Where Yukon Solitaire comes from
Yukon is a close relative of Klondike, and the name points to the same part of northwest Canada: the Klondike gold fields lie in the Yukon. The game keeps Klondike's columns and colour rule and drops the stock, which turns a game of waiting for cards into a game of moving them.
It has long been part of standard solitaire collections, on paper and on computers.
Play Yukon Solitaire on Hevagames
Our Yukon runs in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, with nothing to download. Drag a card, and the cards on top of it come along. You can also tap a card and then the place it should go, or double tap to send it to a foundation or the best other legal spot. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move between piles, Enter picks up and places, Z or Backspace undoes and N deals a new game. Long columns squeeze their spacing so they stay on screen.
Undo has no limit and each undo counts as a move. The deal in progress, with the last 60 undo steps, is saved in your browser and survives a reload. The top bar shows moves, time and score.
Scoring: 10 points for each card on a foundation and 5 points for each face-down card you turn over. A win adds a bonus of 1000 minus 2 per move and minus half a point per second, never below zero. The timer starts with your first move, and your best score is kept on your device.
How to play
- 1All 52 cards are dealt into seven columns; there is no stock.
- 2Build four foundations by suit, from Ace up to King.
- 3In the columns, a card goes on a card one rank higher of the other color.
- 4You can move any face-up card together with every card on top of it, even if those cards are not in order.
- 5Only a King can go into an empty column. Face-down cards turn up when they reach the top.
Controls
Tips
- Go after the columns with the most face-down cards first.
- Moving a big group to uncover one card is often worth it.
- Free the Aces early; a buried Ace blocks a whole suit.
