Carpet

Full rules

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

Overview

Carpet is a quick and easy patience (also called solitaire) – a card game for one player. Twenty cards lie face up in a rectangle, the "carpet". You take cards out of the carpet and off the stock to build all four suits in order, from Ace to King. Every gap in the carpet is patched with a new card. If all 52 cards end up on the four suit piles, you have won.

• Players: 1.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers.
• Time: about 5 minutes per game. You will win most games – roughly three out of four.

Words you need

• Foundation: one of four piles, one per suit. Each starts with an Ace and is built up in suit: A, 2, 3 … up to K, all of the same suit. Ranks from low to high: A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K.
• Carpet: the 20 cards laid out in four rows of five. Each card lies on its own – cards are never put on top of carpet cards.
• Stock: the face-down pile of cards left over after the layout.
• Waste pile: a face-up pile next to the stock where you put cards you can't use yet. Only its top card can be played.

Setup

1. Take the four Aces out of the deck and lay them face up as the four foundations – for example two on the left and two on the right, with room between them.
2. Shuffle the other 48 cards.
3. Deal 20 cards face up in four rows of five between the Aces. This is the carpet.
4. Put the remaining 28 cards face down in a pile: this is the stock.

A layout might look like this:

Playing

There are no turns – you just keep making moves.

1. Play from the carpet. Every card in the carpet is available. Move any card that fits onto a foundation: the 2 of a suit onto its Ace, then the 3 of that suit, and so on.
2. Patch the holes. Each card you take out leaves a gap in the carpet. Fill every gap with the top card of the waste pile. If the waste pile is empty, fill the gap with the top card of the stock instead. You may fill a gap straight away or wait until a more useful card is on top of the waste pile.
3. Turn up the stock. When you want a new card, turn the top card of the stock face up. If it fits onto a foundation, play it there. If not, put it face up on the waste pile. The top card of the waste pile can always be played to a foundation or used to fill a gap.

You may never put one card on top of another in the carpet – carpet cards only ever go to the foundations.

Example: In the layout above, 2♦, 2♠ and 2♥ go straight onto their Aces, followed by 3♦ and 3♠. That leaves five gaps. The waste pile is empty, so you fill the gaps from the stock. Later you turn up 6♥ from the stock: it can't go on a foundation yet, so it goes on the waste pile. When 5♥ has gone up, 6♥ follows from the waste pile.

End of the game

You go through the stock only once – there is no second time through, and the waste pile is never turned over.

• You win if all 52 cards reach the foundations.
• You lose if the stock is used up and none of the available cards (carpet cards and the top of the waste pile) can be played.

Tips for beginners

• Fill gaps with cards that will soon be playable – a card one or two ranks above a foundation is better than a King.
• Leave high cards on the waste pile for a while if the carpet is full and they aren't needed yet; bring them into the carpet when a gap opens.
• Look for chains: cards of one suit in the carpet that can go up one after another, like 4♣, 5♣ and 6♣.
• Watch the waste pile. A card buried deep in it is only freed once everything above it has gone.

Variants

Optional: an older way to play, described in Foster's Complete Hoyle (1914 edition):

• Aces stay in the deck. Deal the carpet from the full, shuffled 52 cards. Any Aces in it go to one side as foundations, and their gaps are filled from the stock. Aces that turn up later also start foundations.
• Holes are filled from the stock as long as you can keep playing.
• When you are stuck, turn the rest of the stock face up one card at a time onto a single extra pile, playing any card that fits. From then on, holes in the carpet may only be filled with the top card of this extra pile.