Rules for Fourteen Out

Family: The Wish
Categories: Simple, Rewarding
Variants:
Also Known As: Fourteen Puzzle,Take Fourteen

Fourteen Out is a matching game with simple rules but plenty of room for thought and planning. Skilled players may win two games in three.

Layout

Shuffle the deck and lay it out in twelve tableau piles, face up and fanned down. The first four piles start with five cards each, the rest with four. A discard pile begins the game empty.

Play

The top card of each tableau is available. Pairs of available cards whose ranks add to 14 (for example Ace + King, or 5 + 9) may be picked up and discarded.

Solitaire Till Dawn will automatically discard matched pairs when you drop one card onto another.

Goal

The goal is to discard all cards.

Tips

Try to reduce the tableau piles evenly; if you empty a tableau pile it will be useless from then on and you want to have as many cards available for choice as possible.

Watch out for potential blockages: if there are a Queen and a 2 in the same pile, you’ll need another Queen-2 pair to break them up. Similarly, watch out for crossed pairs such as a Queen above a 4 in one pile, and a 9 above a 2 in another.