Carpet Solitaire

Carpet solitaire has a distinctive layout: a flat grid of twenty face-up cards spread like a carpet across the table, with foundations and a stock pile at the edges. The metaphor is apt. You look at the whole carpet at once, identify which threads can be pulled, and watch the pattern slowly resolve.

The setup is unusual. Before a single stock card is dealt, all four Aces are removed and placed directly on the foundation piles. This removes one of solitaire's most common frustrations — the Ace buried at the bottom of a pile — and lets play begin immediately with a running start.

The carpet itself is a 4x5 grid of twenty face-up cards. There is no sequencing within the grid. Cards don't stack by rank or suit. Instead, any carpet card that is the next card needed by a foundation pile moves there directly, leaving a gap.

Gaps are filled from the waste pile, or from the stock if the waste pile is empty. The stock deals one card at a time onto the waste pile. The top waste card is always available for play to a foundation; if it doesn't fit, it stays while the next stock card is dealt.

Once the stock runs out, no reshuffling is allowed. Whatever remains on the waste pile is gone. This finality creates real pressure in the mid-game. You want the carpet to stay populated with useful cards and the waste pile to deal in a helpful order — but you have limited control over either.

Carpet rewards attention over deep calculation. The visible grid gives you full information about twenty cards, making planning easier than in hidden-card games. But the waste pile adds enough uncertainty to keep each deal feeling fresh.

1. Remove all four Aces from the deck and place them on the four foundation piles. The goal is to build each foundation up by suit from Ace to King.
2. Shuffle the remaining 48 cards. Deal 20 face-up in a 4x5 grid to form the carpet. The remaining 28 cards form the stock, placed face-down.

On each turn:

• Check the carpet. Any carpet card that is the next card needed by a foundation may move there directly. When a card leaves the carpet, a gap forms. Fill every gap before continuing.
• Fill gaps. Take the top card from the waste pile to fill each gap. If the waste pile is empty, take from the stock. The newly placed card may itself be playable to a foundation — if so, move it and fill the new gap. Repeat until no more foundation moves are possible from the carpet.
• Deal from the stock. When no carpet card can move to a foundation, deal the top stock card face-up onto the waste pile. Only the top waste card is available for play. If it matches a foundation need, move it and continue. Otherwise, deal the next stock card.

The stock may not be redealt. Once it is exhausted, only the carpet remains playable.

The game is won when all 52 cards are on the four foundations. The game is lost when the stock runs out and no further foundation moves can be made from the carpet.

• Use your information advantage. Twenty cards are visible at all times. Before dealing from the stock, survey the carpet and map which cards you can play now, which will become playable as foundations advance, and which are unlikely to move at all.
• Clear low ranks from the carpet first. Cards ranked 2 through 5 become available for foundation play earliest. Clearing them opens carpet slots. High-ranked cards stall in the carpet longer, so rotating them out with waste pile cards can improve your position.
• Don't let the waste pile bury important cards. Once a card enters the waste pile, it is only accessible when it sits on top. A key card buried under several waste cards is effectively unavailable until those cards move to foundations — which may never happen if the sequence is blocked.
• Be selective when filling gaps. A Jack, Queen, or King placed in the carpet when foundations are still at low ranks will occupy that spot uselessly for most of the game. Sometimes it is better to deal from the stock and leave a low waste card accessible for a future gap fill.
• Build foundations evenly. A foundation racing far ahead of the others can strand the next cards needed for lagging suits in the waste pile beneath already-played cards.

Carpet belongs to the tradition of open-tableau patience games in which all or most cards are visible from the outset. This transparency distinguishes it from the hidden-card drama of games like Klondike, placing it in a quieter, more contemplative corner of the patience family.

The defining structural feature — removing Aces before play and using them to seed the foundations — appears in a cluster of related patience games from the nineteenth century. Most share the goal of building foundations in suit from Ace to King while managing a visible tableau. The carpet's flat grid format, with no column hierarchy, represents an older and more spatial approach to tableau design than the vertical cascading columns that came to dominate popular patience variants.

Carpet appears in several comprehensive solitaire collections and card game reference books, typically classified as a patience game of moderate difficulty with a pleasant balance between visibility and chance. Its reputation as a relaxing game fits its mechanics well: the wide layout, visible cards, and straightforward foundation-building goal create a meditative rhythm quite different from the tense resource management of FreeCell or Spider.