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Glossary

Solitaire Terms — Tableau, Foundation, Stock and Waste

The words of solitaire rules, from tableau to talon, explained in plain English, with the other names you will meet for the same thing.

Solitaire rules borrow old card-table words, and different books use different ones for the same thing. The terms below are the ones used for Klondike, the game most people mean by solitaire. For how they fit together in play, see the rules of Klondike.

The places on the table

Tableau
The main part of the layout: in Klondike, seven piles dealt in a row, with one to seven cards each. Most moves happen here. The word is French for a picture or a board.
Pile, or column
One of the seven stacks of the tableau. Its cards are spread downward so that every face-up card shows. Bicycle’s rules call them piles; other descriptions call them columns or stacks.
Foundation
One of four places where the cards are collected, one suit to each, from the ace up to the king. The foundations start empty, and the game is won when all 52 cards are on them.
Stock
The cards left over after the deal, kept face down. In Klondike that is 24 cards. You turn them up, one or three at a time, when you want new cards to play.
Waste, or waste pile
The face-up pile where cards from the stock land. Its top card can be played to the tableau or to a foundation.
Talon
An older word with two uses: some books call the waste the talon, and others use it for the stock. When you meet it, check which pile the writer means.
Space
A place in the tableau left empty when all the cards of a pile have been moved away. In Klondike only a king, or a run that starts with a king, may fill it.

The cards

Rank and suit
The rank is a card’s value, from ace (low) through 2 to 10, jack and queen to king (high). The suit is one of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. Hearts and diamonds are red; clubs and spades are black.
Face up, face down
A face-up card shows its rank and suit and can be played when it is free. A face-down card shows only its back. In Klondike a face-down card is turned up once it is the top card of its pile.
Run, or sequence
Face-up cards in a pile that follow each other in order, each one rank lower than the card above it and of the other color. A run can be moved as one unit onto another pile.
Free card, or available card
A card that nothing covers: the top card of a pile, of the waste or of a foundation. Only free cards and runs can be moved.

The moves

Deal
Laying out the cards at the start of a game. In Klondike, 28 cards go into the tableau and the rest form the stock; the steps are in how to set up solitaire.
Build
To place a card on another according to the rules. Klondike builds down in the tableau, in alternating colors (a red 6 on a black 7), and up by suit on the foundations (the 2 of hearts on the ace of hearts).
Draw, or turn
Taking cards from the stock and laying them face up on the waste. A game is called draw one (Turn 1) or draw three (Turn 3) by how many cards each draw moves.
Pass
One trip through the whole stock, from its first card to its last. Rule sets differ on how many passes you get: no limit, three or only one.
Redeal
Turning the waste over, without shuffling it, so that it becomes the stock again and a new pass can begin. Microsoft’s scoring rules call it recycling the waste.
Worrying back
Moving a card from a foundation back down to the tableau, usually to give a lower card a place to land. Many versions allow it and some do not. The term is used in the research on the game, such as the study by Blake and Gent.

Ways to play

Klondike
The best-known solitaire, with seven piles, four foundations and a stock. Nobody knows for sure where the name comes from; a link to the Klondike Gold Rush is often suggested but has no evidence behind it.
Patience
The British name for one-player card games, still used in Britain and several other countries. “Solitaire” is the American word, which spread worldwide with the version of Klondike in Microsoft Windows.
Draw one (Turn 1)
Klondike with the stock turned one card at a time, so every card of the stock can be played on every pass. The easier way to play; see Turn 1 vs Turn 3.
Draw three (Turn 3)
Klondike with the stock turned three cards at a time and only the top one playable. Far fewer cards are in reach on each pass, and fewer deals can be won.
Thoughtful solitaire
A version of Klondike in which the player knows where every card is from the start. Researchers use it to measure how many deals can be won at all, which is the upper limit given in the odds of Klondike.
Standard scoring
The points system of Microsoft Solitaire: points for moving cards to the tableau and the foundations and for turning cards over, points taken away for moving a card back from a foundation and for going through the waste again.
Vegas scoring
Scoring borrowed from a casino game, in which the player pays to play and is paid for every card that reaches a foundation. In the casino game the stock is dealt one card at a time and only once.
Canfield, or Demon
A different solitaire, and the game that the name Klondike first meant: early twentieth-century books used “Klondike” for it before the name passed to the seven-pile game. It is called Canfield in the United States and Demon elsewhere.

Play Klondike now

Deal a game in your browser: Turn 1 Klondike (draw one) or Turn 3 Klondike (draw three).

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