How to Play Golf Solitaire — Rules and Tips
The shortest game on the site: clear the thirty-five cards laid out in seven columns. It looks a lot like TriPeaks, but Ace and King do not connect.
Play Golf nowRules
- Seven columns of five cards each, all face up. The other seventeen cards form the stock, and one of them is turned face up at the start to begin the waste pile.
- Only the front card of each column can be taken. Taking it uncovers the card behind.
- You can take a card that is one rank above or below the top card of the waste pile. Suits don't matter.
- Ace and King do not connect. Only a 2 goes on an Ace, and only a Queen goes on a King.
- When there is nothing to take, turn over one card from the stock. You may also draw when a card could be taken.
- The stock is used once, with no redeal. Take all thirty-five cards to win; if the stock runs out and nothing can be taken, the game is over.
How it differs from TriPeaks
| TriPeaks | Golf | |
|---|---|---|
| Layout | Three peaks, 28 cards | Seven columns, 35 cards |
| Cards blocking a card | Two | One (the card in front) |
| A ↔ K | Connect | Don't connect |
| Stock | 24 cards | 17 cards |
In TriPeaks the ranks form a loop, so in a deal that looks stuck a single Ace can open the way. In Golf the loop is broken and Aces and Kings become dead ends. It is a one-line difference in the rules, but the game feels completely different.
What winning players do
Decide which end to clear first
With the loop broken, counting the cards that are left no longer shows you the way ahead. On every move you are choosing whether to tidy up the low end (A, 2, 3) or the high end (J, Q, K) first.
Spot buried Aces and Kings early
An Ace or a King can only leave onto one rank. If one is buried at the back of a column, that column will hang around until late. Working out early which column is the troublemaker saves you draws.
Long runs are your score
Just as in TriPeaks. How many of the sixteen stock cards you save is what the "fewest moves" ranking measures.
The hardest of our five games
The price of cutting Ace from King shows up directly in the numbers. We checked 5,000 deals and 2,778 of them (55.6%) could not be solved. Had we opened the numbers without checking, more than half of players would have been handed a deal that no amount of effort could crack.
Every one of those numbers now points to a different layout, so deals #1 to #5,000 have no gaps.
There is no undo, for the same reason as in TriPeaks: taking back a draw would let you peek at the next stock card.