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Clock Patience
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About the game
Clock Patience is the solitaire you play with your hands and not with your head. Thirteen piles of four cards are laid out in a circle, twelve of them where the hours go on a clock face and one in the middle. Each pile stands for a rank: the Ace is at one o'clock, the Queen at twelve, and the Kings are in the centre. You start in the middle, turn the top card of the centre pile and take it to the pile of its rank, where it goes face up. Then you turn the next card in that pile, and so on.
The game is won when every card has been turned up, and lost when the fourth King turns up while there are still face-down cards. There are no choices to make once the cards are down, so winning is a matter of luck: roughly one game in thirteen comes out. It is a calm little game for a few minutes, and a very old one, used for telling fortunes as well as for passing time.
This HTML5 version by milsaware draws the cards with CSS and needs no images. It does not announce a defeat: if the last King is up and cards are still face down, you are stuck and press D to start over. The page keeps a count of the games you played and won in this session.
Playing it here
Click Play. The cards are moved by drag and drop, which works with a mouse and on most laptops with a touchpad; it may not work on a phone or tablet. Pick up the face-up card from the pile where you are and drop it on the pile of its rank, and the game turns up the next card of that pile. Keep going until all the Kings are out or every card is face up. Press the D key at any time to deal a new game.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| drag and drop the face-up card onto the pile of its rank | play it and turn up the next card |
| D | deal a new game |
A few things worth knowing
Ace is one, Queen is twelve. On the clock face the Ace sits at one o'clock, the Ten at ten, the Jack at eleven and the Queen at twelve; the Kings go in the middle. A card is only accepted on the pile of its own rank.
It is a game of luck. The result is decided by the deal, so do not be upset by a loss. A win only needs the four Kings to turn up last.
Count the Kings. Every King that turns up brings you closer to the end, and the fourth one ends the game.
Credits and licence
Clock Patience was created by milsaware and is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3. The full source of the exact version served here is published next to the game, as the licence requires, and the licence text is linked from this page. The only changes are a missing external icon link and a shorter page title.