Rules for Carpet

Family: Calculation
Categories: Simple, Rewarding, Short, Easy to Win
Variants:
Also Known As:

Carpet is fun to look at, and “sweeping” this carpet is much more fun than cleaning the one in your living room! Most games are winnable, and you’ll get good scores if you play with a little care.

Layout

Remove the four Aces from the deck, and shuffle the remainder. Place twenty cards face up in four rows of five each, with no overlaps. This is the “carpet.” On either side of the carpet, place the four Aces. Keep the rest of the deck in your hand; you will be dealing from it into a discard pile that starts out empty.

Play

The foundations (the four Aces) build up in suit to the King. All cards in the carpet, and the top card of the discard pile, are available for play onto the foundations. Empty spaces in the carpet may be filled from the discard pile.

Dealing

You may deal at any time by taking one card from the deck and turning it face up onto the discard pile. There are no redeals: when the deck is empty, dealing is no longer allowed.

Goal

The goal is to move all the cards onto the foundations.

Tips

Always play onto the foundations as soon as possible; there’s no reason to delay any foundation move. (You can use Solitaire Till Dawn’s “Autoplay Lock” toolbar button to do this for you automatically, if you like.)

Use empty spaces in the carpet to hold dealt cards that you think you can play to the foundations soon. Higher-ranking cards should stay in the discard pile until the foundations have been built up close to their level, or until you have a lot of free space in the carpet, or until you have no other moves and can’t deal any more.

Try to make “chains” of same-suit cards in the carpet. For example, if the carpet contains the 4, 6, 7, and 8 of Spades, it’s smart to add the 5 of Spades to the carpet. Then when the 4 gets sent to the foundations, the rest can follow it in one fell swoop.