Crazy Quilt

Full rules

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

Overview

Crazy Quilt is a patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire) played with two decks. Its layout, the quilt, is a square of 64 cards lying alternately upright and sideways, like the squares of a chessboard. You pick cards out of the quilt from its edges and move them onto eight foundations – piles built 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.

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

Setup

1. Foundations: take out one Ace and one King of each suit (8 cards) and lay them in a row above the layout. They are the bases of the eight foundations.
2. Quilt: shuffle the other 96 cards. Deal 64 cards face up in 8 rows of 8, turning every other card sideways. The first card of the first row lies upright (↕), the second sideways (↔), and so on; the next row starts with a sideways card. Lay the cards edge to edge so that neighbouring cards touch.
3. Stock: the remaining 32 cards stay face down as the stock (the pile you draw from). Next to it you will form a face-up waste pile.

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 quilt cards: a quilt card is available if at least one of its short ends does not touch another card. At the start these are the upright cards in the top and bottom rows and the sideways cards in the outer left and right columns – 16 cards in all. Every card you remove frees the neighbours whose short ends pointed at it, so you gradually eat your way into the quilt. Spaces in the quilt are never filled.

The stock and the waste pile: turn the top card of the stock face up onto the waste pile whenever you like, one card at a time. The top card of the waste pile may be played onto a foundation.

Building on the waste pile: an available quilt card may also be placed on the top card of the waste pile if it is one rank higher or lower in the same suit. The sequence does not go round the corner: an Ace and a King are not neighbours here. This lets you dig out cards that would otherwise stay buried. Cards on the waste pile can only go to the foundations – never back into the quilt.

Example: the top card of the waste pile is 8♠. The 9♠ and, after that, the 10♠ are available in the quilt. Put the 9♠ on the 8♠ and the 10♠ on the 9♠ – each move frees new neighbours in the quilt. The 10♠ can later go onto a King foundation that has reached J♠.

Redeal

When the stock is empty, you may turn the waste pile over once, without shuffling, to form a new stock (it now also contains the quilt cards you placed on it). Then carry on as before.

End of the game

You win when all 104 cards are on the foundations. If the stock runs out a second time and no more moves are possible, the game is lost.

Tips for beginners

• Before turning a card, look at what is available in the quilt – playing to the foundations always comes first.
• Use the waste pile to open up the quilt, but don't bury a card on it that you will soon need for a foundation.
• Free cards from the edges where many neighbours depend on them; a card in a corner frees less than one in the middle of an edge.

Variants

• Second redeal (optional): allow a second redeal, which makes the game easier.
• Round the corner (house rule): as in Alhambra, let the waste pile run on from King to Ace and from Ace to King. This also makes the game a little easier.