Four Seasons (solitaire)

Four Seasons is a solitaire card game which is played with a single deck of playing cards. It is also known as Corner Card and Vanishing Cross, due to the arrangement of the foundations and the tableau respectively.

In their book The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games, Morehead and Mott-Smith rate the odds of successfully completing Four Seasons as 1 in 10 .[1]

Rules

First, five cards are dealt in form of a cross: three cards are placed in a row, then two cards are each placed above and below the middle of the three cards. A sixth card is dealt in the upper left corner of the cross. This card will be the base for the first of four foundations. During the game the three other cards of this rank will eventually be placed in the other three corners of the cross as foundations.

The foundations are built up according to suit, and building is round-the-corner, i.e. aces are placed above kings, except when aces are the foundation bases.

Cards in the cross are built down regardless of suit and any space in the cross is filled with any available card, whether it is the top card of a pile within the cross, the top card of the wastepile, or a card from the stock. Like the foundations, building in the cross is round-the-corner, i.e. kings are placed over aces, unless aces are the foundations. Only one card can be moved at a time.

Whenever the game goes on a standstill, the stock is dealt one card at a time into the wastepile, the top card of which is available for play on the cross or on the foundations. There is no redeal.

The game ends if a standstill occurs after the stock has run out. The game is won when all cards end up in the foundations.

Variations

Variations of Four Seasons include:

  • In Czarina, any space in the cross is immediately filled only from the stock.
  • In Corners, the cross is a reserve instead of a tableau, with each space being a cell that can hold at most one card. Empty cells in this game are filled immediately from the stock.
  • In Simplicity, instead of a cross the tableau contains twelve cards dealt into two rows of six. The thirteenth card dealt becomes the base of the first foundation. Also, building in the tableau is down by alternating colors.

Other related games include Florentine Patience and Little Windmill.

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References
  1. "Four Seasons". 2004. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
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