Archway

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Setup
3. Playing
4. End of the game
5. Tips for beginners
6. Variants

Overview

Archway is a patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire) played with two decks. The aim is to move all 104 cards onto eight foundations – piles that you build in a fixed order: four start with an Ace and go up to the King, four start with a King and go down to the Ace, each pile in a single suit. Almost every card is visible from the start, so you can think ahead – but estimates of how often the game comes out vary widely.

• Players: 1
• You need: two standard 52-card decks without jokers, shuffled together, and a large table.

Setup

1. Foundations: take out one Ace and one King of each suit (8 cards). Put them in two squares of four, one on each side of the table, each King directly above the Ace of the same suit. These are the bases of the foundations.
2. Columns: shuffle the other 96 cards. Deal 48 cards face up in four columns of 12, each card overlapping the one before so that you can see them all. The card at the free end of each column (the one not covered by another card) is its exposed card.
3. Arch: sort the remaining 48 cards by rank into 13 packets and lay them in an arch above the columns: Aces at the left foot, then Twos, Threes and so on, with the Sevens at the top and the Kings at the right foot. Fan each packet so every card is visible. The packets have different sizes, and a rank may be missing altogether if all its cards landed in the columns.

Playing

Building the foundations: a card may go onto a foundation of its own suit if it follows on directly:

• on an Ace foundation, the next higher card: A, 2, 3 … Q, K;
• on a King foundation, the next lower card: K, Q, J … 2, A.

Available cards – only these may be moved:

• the exposed card of each column;
• every card in the arch, wherever it lies in its packet.

Cards can only be moved to the foundations – you never build on the columns or put cards back into the arch. When you move an exposed card, the card beneath it becomes exposed.

Example: the ♠ Ace foundation shows 4♠ and the ♠ King foundation shows J♠. The arch holds a 5♠ and the exposed card of a column is 10♠. Play the 5♠ onto the Ace foundation and the 10♠ onto the King foundation; the card under the 10♠ is now exposed.

Spaces: when you clear a column completely, it becomes a space. You may put one available card into it (from another column or from the arch), usually to uncover a card beneath it. Only one card at a time may lie in a space; it counts as that column's exposed card.

Reversing: both decks contain every card twice, so each suit has an Ace foundation and a King foundation. Once the two foundations of one suit meet – the Ace pile has reached the card just below the top of the King pile – you may move cards from the top of one onto the other, as long as the order stays correct. The Ace and King bases must stay where they are.

Example: the ♥ Ace foundation has reached 9♥ and the ♥ King foundation has reached 10♥. The only available heart is the J♥. Move the 10♥ from the King foundation onto the 9♥; now the J♥ fits on the Ace foundation.

End of the game

There is no redeal. You win when all eight foundations hold 13 cards each. The game is lost when no more moves are possible before that.

Tips for beginners

• Everything is open, so plan before you move: look for the second copy of each card you need.
• Dig first into columns that bury many low cards (for the Ace piles) or high cards (for the King piles).
• Don't fill a space right away – keep it for the moment it frees exactly the card you need.
• Use reversing to adapt the two foundations of a suit to whichever cards happen to be available.

Variants

• Easier game (optional): in the version given in The Playing Card Kit, cards may also be moved from the columns back to the arch packets, which makes the game slightly easier to win.