Twenty solitaires

Every table is a classic solitaire

Each run deals a different hand of these twenty. The rules are the classic ones. What Interregnum adds is a challenge at every table, a limit in moves or in stock, and the rule of the court you are playing in.

• Klondike

  The one everyone knows: seven columns and a stock. The challenge is a count of cards on the foundations within a move limit, and it climbs with every court you topple.

• FreeCell

  Every card face up, four free cells, pure planning. A court that drowns cards takes away the one thing FreeCell runs on: seeing everything.

• Spider

  Two suits, ten columns, the longest of the twenty. You do not have to finish it: the challenge is to turn over so many face-down cards within the move limit.

• Spiderette

  Spider with one deck and four suits, dealt in Klondike's seven columns. The same goal, turning face-down cards, on a table small enough for a Jack.

• TriPeaks

  Three peaks, cards one higher or lower than the waste, King and Ace side by side. The challenge counts the cards you clear, or your longest chain without touching the stock.

• Golf

  TriPeaks with everything in view and no wrapping from King to Ace. The question is which column to dig first and when to spend the stock.

• Pyramid

  Pairs that add up to thirteen, and Kings that leave alone. One pass through the stock, and only the cards that leave the pyramid count.

• Aces Up

  Four columns: a card goes when a higher one of its suit tops another column. Two minutes long, and the challenge is how many cards you get rid of.

• Yukon

  Klondike with no stock, where any face-up card moves with everything on top of it, in order or not. Cards to the foundations within a move limit.

• Canfield

  A reserve of thirteen face-down cards and foundations that start at a random rank. Everything you do is to free the top of the reserve, and some tables ask you to empty part of it.

• Eagle Wing

  The Canfield family, with eight wings of three cards each. Every wing is a small cell you spend to reach the trunk, and the stock goes round three times.

• Baroness

  Also called Thirteens. Five columns, tops that add up to thirteen, and a stock that buries all five at once: decide what to take before you deal again.

• Eight Off

  FreeCell with eight cells, four of them full from the start, same-suit sequences and only Kings in an empty column. The cells become a stock you can see.

• Bristol

  Eight fans of three cards and three waste piles that bury three cards at a time. Leave the fans ready to take the next round before you deal it.

• Baker's Dozen

  Thirteen open columns, one card at a time, no cells and no empty columns. Drier than FreeCell: you only dig out a card that already has somewhere to go.

• Beleaguered Castle

  The Aces start on the foundations and every card is face up. The only way out is an empty column, so you clear one early and use it as a cell.

• Calculation

  Four foundations that climb by ones, twos, threes and fours, regardless of suit, and four waste piles you build yourself: the one solitaire where you make your own stock.

• Betsy Ross

  Calculation with a single waste pile and three passes through the stock. What you let go by on this pass, you pick up on the next.

• Forty Thieves

  Two decks, ten columns, one card at a time and a stock that passes once. The hardest of the classics, and so the rare table only a King sits at.

• Interregnum

  The two-deck patience catalogued by David Parlett that gives the game its name: eight foundations climbing from indicator cards, regardless of suit. Only King Nobody, the last Joker, deals it.