Yukon Solitaire

Klondike's rules with Klondike's brakes removed

Yukon looks like a Klondike table that dealt itself too many cards — seven columns, twenty-one face down, everything else fanned face up on top — and it plays by one radical permission: any face-up card may be moved together with every card sitting on it, in any order. The pile you drop does not need to be a sequence. Only the single card you grabbed must land legally, downward and colour-alternating.

There is no stock. All fifty-two cards are on the table from the first move, which turns the game into a pure excavation problem: get the buried twenty-one face up, then let the foundations climb.

• ✓Any face-up card moves together with every card on top of it.
• ✓Columns build down in alternating colours — only the card you grabbed has to match.
• ✓Empty columns take a King.
• ✓There is no stock and no redeal.

Reading a Yukon board

The deal puts one card in the first column and then stacks the rest so that each column carries a face-down base with four or five face-up cards fanned over it. Twenty-one cards start hidden — the same number Klondike buries — but you can see thirty-one from the first move, against Klondike's seven. The difficulty is not that Yukon hides more; it is that it gives you no stock to bail you out.

That trade is the character of the game. You know more, you can move almost anything, and there is no stock to bail you out when a plan fails. Every recovery has to come from cards already on the table.

Pile move

Dragging a face-up card with everything on top of it, in whatever order those cards are.

Lead card

The card you grab. It alone must land legally; the cards riding along are unchecked.

Base

The face-down cards at the bottom of a column. Uncovering them is the whole game.

Receiver

An exposed card that can accept something. Run out of receivers and the board is dead.

Excavating on purpose

1. 01

   Count the hidden cards under each column

   Because any pile can move, the question is never whether a move is possible but what it uncovers. Dig where the face-down count is highest — that column is statistically hiding whatever you are missing.

2. 02

   Keep receivers on the table

   Sending cards to the foundations early strips the tableau of the places you need to land piles. With no stock to replenish anything, a board with no legal destinations is a lost game, however healthy the foundations look.

3. 03

   Plan what rides along with a King

   An empty column is powerful here because the King that fills it brings its whole tail. Decide which King, and what you want carried with it, before you spend the moves clearing the space.

4. 04

   Do not bury a card you have already identified

   Yukon's freedom is also its trap: dropping a twelve-card pile on top of the Ace you spent six moves exposing is a self-inflicted loss. Before a big move, check what is at the destination.

Yukon compared with Klondike

Deals here are solver-verified winnable, so the excavation always has an exit. Its same-suit sibling Russian solitaire keeps this deal and this move rule while halving the legal destinations — the natural next step when Yukon stops resisting.

Questions about this game

How is Yukon different from Klondike?

Two ways: there is no stock — every card is dealt to the tableau at the start — and face-up cards move with everything on top of them regardless of order. Klondike's careful sequenced runs become Yukon's bulk earthmoving.

Why does tapping a card do nothing?

Tapping only sends a single card home to a foundation. Because Yukon moves whole piles, everything else is done by dragging the card you want to lead the move.

Are these deals guaranteed winnable too?

Yes. Yukon is one of the games the solver can verify end to end, so every deal on this page comes from the verified pool with a proven winning line behind it.