Rules for Trefoil

Family: La Belle Lucie
Categories: Rewarding
Variants: La Belle Lucie, Shamrocks
Also Known As:

Here’s an easier variant of the classic La Belle Lucie. The foundations are started for you with the four Aces already in place to give you a running start. With skillful play you may win as many as 40% or more of your games.

Layout

Extract the four Aces from the deck and place them as starter cards on the four foundation piles. Shuffle the remaining cards and lay them out in 16 tableau piles of three cards each. The cards are face up and fanned, so that all can be seen.

Play

Tableaus build down in suit. Empty tableau piles may not be filled. Foundations build up in suit. Top cards of tableaus are available for building on tableaus and foundations.

Dealing

It is rare to win a game with the initial layout. When you are blocked, you may scoop up all the tableau cards, shuffle them, and again lay them out in piles of three (with the last pile perhaps containing two cards or one). This shuffle may be repeated the second time you become blocked, but may not be done more than those two times.

The Draw

After the final shuffle, you may select any card in the tableau (whether it is available or not) and bring it to the front of its pile, or play it on another pile. This is the privilege of the draw, which you may only do once.

By popular request, Solitaire Till Dawn allows you to draw without waiting for the final shuffle, even though it’s technically against the rules.

Goal

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

Tips

Look for moves you can’t make, and work around them. You can’t reach any card under a King, until you can play the King to the foundations. A pile with (for example) a 7 on top of the 8 and 6 of its suit is blocked because there’s no place to move the 7 to. Don’t create those situations, and don’t waste time trying to uncover any higher cards in that suit. At the end, you’ll probably have to use the draw to get a lower-ranked card out from under its King.