Clock

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Setup
3. Playing
4. Winning
5. Tips for beginners
6. Variants

Overview

Clock is a very simple patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire). The cards are dealt in piles around an imaginary clock face, and then each card you turn up tells you where to go next. You make no decisions at all – it is pure luck, which makes it a good first patience for children. You win if every card has been turned face up before the fourth King appears.

• Players: 1
• You need: one standard 52-card deck, no jokers, and a table with room for a circle of piles.

Setup

Shuffle and deal all 52 cards face down into 13 piles of 4 cards. Lay out 12 of them in a circle like the numbers on a clock face, and put the 13th pile in the middle:

Each pile stands for one rank: the pile at 1 o'clock belongs to the Aces, 2 o'clock to the 2s and so on up to 10 o'clock for the 10s; 11 o'clock belongs to the Jacks, 12 o'clock to the Queens, and the pile in the centre belongs to the Kings.

Playing

1. Turn up the top card of the centre pile.
2. Put it face up at the bottom of (underneath) the pile it belongs to – a 7 under the 7 o'clock pile, a Queen under the 12 o'clock pile, a King under the centre pile.
3. Now turn up the top face-down card of that pile, and put it face up under its own pile.
4. Carry on like this: each time, the pile you have just added to gives you your next card.
5. When a King comes up, put it under the centre pile and take the next face-down card from the centre.

Because you always slide the new card underneath, the face-down cards stay on top where you can take them, and the face-up cards collect beneath them.

Example: The first card from the centre is a 4♦. You slide it under the 4 o'clock pile and turn up that pile's top card: a J♣. It goes under the 11 o'clock pile, whose top card is a K♥. The King goes under the centre pile, and you turn up the centre's next card …

Winning

The game ends when the fourth King is put under the centre pile – then you have nowhere left to go.

• If at that moment all 52 cards are face up, the clock is complete and you win.
• If there are still face-down cards anywhere, you lose.

About one game in thirteen comes out.

Tips for beginners

• There is nothing to decide, so play quickly – a game takes only a few minutes.
• Great for children learning the order of the cards: they have to find the right number on the clock each time.
• Take care to put every card under its pile, not on top – otherwise the game gets muddled.

Variants

• Watch: when the fourth King comes up while there are still face-down cards, you may swap it for any face-down card: put the King face down in that card's place and carry on with the card you took. The game ends when that King turns up again.