Whitehead

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Card order and colours
3. The parts of the layout
4. Setup
5. Playing
6. Winning
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

Whitehead is a patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire) based on Klondike. Your goal is the same: sort the whole deck onto four piles, one per suit, each running from Ace up to King. But in Whitehead every card is dealt face up, so you can see the whole layout and plan ahead, and you build red on red and black on black instead of alternating colours. It is named after the American bridge player Wilbur C. Whitehead.

• Players: 1
• You need: one standard 52-card deck, no jokers, and room for seven columns.
• Time: about 10 minutes per game.

Card order and colours

The Ace is low. From lowest to highest:

A – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – J – Q – K

♥ hearts and ♦ diamonds are the red suits, ♠ spades and ♣ clubs are the black suits.

The parts of the layout

• Tableau: seven piles (columns) where you rearrange the cards. The cards of a column are spread downwards so you can see all of them. The last card of a column is the one nearest to you, not covered by any other card.
• Foundations: four spaces above the tableau, one per suit, empty at the start. Here you collect the cards in order, starting with the Ace.
• Stock: the face-down pile of cards left over after dealing.
• Waste: the face-up pile onto which you turn cards from the stock.

Setup

Shuffle and deal seven columns as in Klondike, but all face up: 1 card in column 1, 2 cards in column 2, and so on up to 7 cards in column 7 – 28 cards in all, each column spread downwards so every card can be seen.

Put the remaining 24 cards face down as the stock, with room next to it for the waste.

Playing

There are no turns – you make one move after another in any order you like.

1. To a foundation: an Ace that becomes a last card (or the top card of the waste) starts a foundation. On it goes the 2 of the same suit, then the 3, and so on up to the King. Any last card and the top card of the waste may go to a foundation.
2. Building in the tableau: you may put a card onto the last card of a column if it is one rank lower and of the same colour – a red card on a red card, a black card on a black card. So 7♥ or 7♦ may go on 8♥ or 8♦; 4♠ or 4♣ on 5♠ or 5♣. This is called building down in colour.
3. Moving runs: a run of cards at the end of a column that are in order and all of the same suit (e.g. 8♠ 7♠ 6♠) may be moved together, as a unit, if its highest card fits where it goes. You may also move just the lower part of such a run. A run that mixes suits (e.g. 8♥ 7♦) can only be taken apart one card at a time.
4. Empty columns: a column that becomes empty may be filled with any last card, or with any run you are allowed to move. You don't have to fill it at once.
5. Using the stock: turn the top card of the stock face up onto the waste, one at a time. The top card of the waste may be played to a foundation or onto the tableau; the card below it becomes available once it has gone.
6. No redeal: you go through the stock only once.

Example: With the layout above, move the 7♠ from column 3 onto the 8♠ at the end of column 7. The 8♠ 7♠ are both spades, so they now form a run that can move as a unit: put them on the 9♣ in column 1 (black on black). Column 7 now ends in the 6♣, and the 5♠ from column 6 goes on it. The run 9♣ 8♠ 7♠ in column 1 can't move as a whole, because it mixes clubs and spades – only the 8♠ 7♠ part can.

Winning

You win when all 52 cards lie on the four foundations. If the stock is used up and no useful move is left, the game is lost. Morehead and Mott-Smith (1949) put the chance of winning at 1 in 20 games; a computer that knows the order of the stock can win about nine deals in ten, so with careful planning you can do much better than the old estimate.

Tips for beginners

• Everything is visible: before you make a move, look where the cards you need are buried.
• Wherever you can, build in suit (7♠ on 8♠ rather than on 8♣) – only same-suit runs can move later.
• Empty columns are precious. Use them to sort mixed runs into single suits, and don't fill one without a reason.
• Play Aces and 2s to the foundations at once; keep higher cards in the tableau while they still hold other cards.
• Before turning a card from the stock, make all the tableau moves you want – the waste only lets you take its top card.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Original rules (random base): according to Michael Keller's Solitaire Laboratory, Whitehead's own rules – also used by David Parlett – did not start with Aces. After dealing the tableau, turn up the 29th card and put it on the foundations as the first base card; the three other cards of that rank start the other foundations. Foundations go round the corner (…Q, K, A, 2…), and in the tableau a King may go on an Ace of the same colour.
• Agnes: an older relative, described by Ernest Bergholt around 1915. Play with the original rules above, but don't use a waste: whenever you like, deal the stock one card onto each of the seven columns, as in Spider. The last two cards go on columns 1 and 2.