Play Fair Maids Solitaire Online for Free (No Signup Required)

Build full ace-to-king runs across seven piles using alternating colors, then ship them whole to the foundations. Medium difficulty, 25% win rate, one deck.

Fair Maids Solitaire takes Will o' the Wisp and swaps its same-suit tableau building for alternating colors, which loosens things up just enough to matter. You still need to assemble a full ace-to-king run before you can send it to one of the four foundations; single cards never make the trip alone. It's medium difficulty, with a 25% chance of winning, and played with a single deck.

Circle back to classic Solitaire whenever you want the simplest version of these rules. You might also like Will o' the Wisp Solitaire, the variant it's based on.

If you run into anything odd or have an idea that would make the game better, please contact me.

Enjoy yourself!

How to play Fair Maids Solitaire

Layout:

7 tableau piles: Build from high to low, regardless of suit, across the 7 tableau piles. Cards in a sequence going down by alternating color can be moved as a group. Any card, or a legal group of cards, can fill an empty slot. Each pile starts with four cards: three face-down and one face-up.

Stock: Clicking the stock deals one card to each tableau pile that still has cards in it.

Foundation:

There are four foundation piles.

Single cards can never be moved to a foundation. Only once you've built a complete sequence on the tableau, all thirteen cards in order from ace to king, can you send it to a foundation.

A foundation pile's top card can move back into play if another pile will accept it.

Tableau:

Seven tableau piles of four cards each. The top card in each pile is dealt face-up, and the rest are dealt face-down.

A card can be added to a tableau pile if it's one rank lower than the pile's current top card, of any suit. So the cards that fit on the 5 of spades are the 4 of spades or the 4 of hearts.

Any tableau card not covered by another card can be played onto another tableau pile.

Any card can fill an empty tableau slot.

If the cards run alternately red and black, a sequence of cards from high to low can move together from one tableau pile to another.

Stock:

The stock holds the leftover cards.

Clicking the stock deals one card to the top of each tableau pile that isn't empty.