How to play Golf Solitaire

Golf Solitaire is the two-minute card game that hides inside a full deck. All fifty-two cards are dealt into seven columns of five; you may only play the bottom card of a column, and you may only play it on a card of the same rank. Suits mean nothing here. Empty the board and you win, and a single click sends a fresh card back from the stock when you are stuck.

Steps

1. Fifty-two cards are dealt into seven columns of five cards each, face up. The remaining cards sit in the stock at the top left.
2. Click the bottom card of a column to pick it up. Only the bottom card of a column can ever be played — that restriction is what makes golf golf.
3. Click a card of the same rank in any other column to pair them and remove both. Kings pair with kings, fives with fives. Suits are irrelevant in this game.
4. When no pair is available, click the stock. It deals one card onto the shortest column and costs you a par step.
5. Clear all fifty-two cards to win. A good deal finishes in around twenty-five to thirty steps; the par shown in the header is a pace to beat, not a limit.
6. Stuck? Press Hint and the game will flash a valid pair. Stuck for real? Undo steps the whole board backwards.

Tips that actually help

• Work the columns in order rather than hunting for the best pair. Any pair removes two cards, so almost any play is roughly equal in value.
• Keep the tallest and shortest columns close together. A lopsided board is what creates the dead ends, because the buried cards can never be reached.
• Save the stock. Flipping it early costs a step and fills a column you may not have wanted to fill.
• Count exposed cards of each rank, not just visible pairs. A rank with three cards showing is the best target in the game because the third one is always safe.
• Use Undo liberally. Golf deals punish a single greedy move, and stepping back one step costs nothing but time.

What is Golf Solitaire?

Golf Solitaire — also called Radioactive Golf, or the golf game — is the shortest patience game that still counts as patience. Where Klondike builds a house from ace to king and Spider sorts long descending runs, golf does something much plainer: it hands you fifty-two cards in seven columns and asks you to find pairs.

The rule set fits on one sentence. You may play the bottom card of a column, and you may only play it onto a card of the same rank. Everything else follows. Suits do not exist in golf. There are no runs to protect. There is no tableau to build. A king only cares about another king.

Why the bottom-card rule matters

Restricting you to the bottom card of each column is what turns a memory task into a sequencing problem. It means the card you want is frequently not available yet, and you have to decide whether to dig for it by clearing the cards above it or to deal around it.

In practice this creates the game's signature rhythm: a short burst of easy pairs, then a pause while you look for the one pair that unlocks a buried card, then another burst. Runs of three or four quick pairs alternate with moments of genuine counting.

The stock is your clock

Golf is one of the very few patience games where dealing is not a gift but a cost. Each stock click puts one card back onto the board and adds one to your par. Use it when there is genuinely no pair available, not when there is merely no convenient pair — the buried cards under an inconvenient pair are usually reachable in two or three moves.

When the stock runs out and no pair remains, the deal is over. Most golf deals are lost here, to a board where all the remaining exposed cards happen to have different ranks and one of them held the key to two others.

Par, not punishment

Par in golf is a pace rather than a target. Since every play removes exactly two cards, the theoretical floor is twenty-six plays; a strong human deal runs about twenty-eight to thirty-one, and the stock pushes it higher. The header shows par so you can see your pace, and the best score per layout is stored on your device so there is always a number to beat.

Two layouts

The default seven-by-five layout leaves sixteen cards in the stock, which is enough to recover from a couple of dead ends. The harder seven-by-seven variant deals forty-nine cards onto the board and leaves only three in reserve, so almost every play has to be planned rather than hunted. It is a good second game once the classic layout feels easy.