Crescent Solitaire Rules: How to Play, Step by Step

Crescent is a two-deck solitaire with a handsome layout: eight foundation piles in the middle of the table and sixteen small piles curving around them like a crescent moon. There is no stock to deal from and no columns to sort. You simply work the top cards of the sixteen piles onto the foundations, with three chances to stir things up when you get stuck.

It is an easy game to learn and a hard one to win, which is a good part of its charm. This page explains the Crescent Solitaire rules from the first card to the last, with small examples along the way. They are the same rules our free Crescent Solitaire game uses.

What You Need

• Two standard decks of 52 playing cards, 104 cards in all, with the jokers taken out. The backs do not have to match.
• A large table. Sixteen piles and eight foundations take up more room than you might expect.
• Fifteen to twenty minutes for a game.

The Goal

Move all 104 cards onto the eight foundations. Four foundations are built upward from the Ace to the King, and four are built downward from the King to the Ace, each in a single suit. When the last card leaves the crescent, all eight foundations hold a full suit of thirteen cards and you have won.

Setting Up

The foundations

Go through the two decks and take out one Ace and one King of each suit: eight cards. Lay the four Kings in a row in the middle of the table and the four Aces in a row below them. It is tidy to keep the suits lined up, so the King of Hearts sits right above the Ace of Hearts, and so on.

• The four Ace foundations build up in suit: Ace, 2, 3, 4, and so on, ending with the King.
• The four King foundations build down in suit: King, Queen, Jack, 10, and so on, ending with the Ace.

Since there are two of every card, each suit has exactly enough cards to fill both of its foundations: one copy of every rank for the pile going up, and one for the pile coming down.

The crescent

Shuffle the remaining 96 cards together well. Deal them into sixteen piles of six cards, set out in a wide arc above and around the foundations. In each pile the first five cards are face down and the sixth is dealt face up on top.

That is the whole layout. There is no stock pile and no waste pile. Every card in the game is on the table from the start, though most of them are hidden under the top cards.

On a phone: a real arc wastes a lot of a small screen, so our game lays the sixteen piles out in four rows of four, with the foundations in two rows above them. Each pile shows its top card and the number of cards it holds. On a wider screen the piles sit in two rows that bow downward at the ends, like the crescent on a table.

How to Play

You may only ever move the top card of a pile, and only one card at a time. There are two places a top card can go.

1. Onto a foundation

A top card can go onto a foundation of its own suit when it is the next card that foundation is waiting for.

• On an Ace foundation, the next card is one rank higher than the card showing. If the Ace pile of Clubs shows the 4, it wants the 5 of Clubs.
• On a King foundation, the next card is one rank lower. If the King pile of Clubs shows the 10, it wants the 9 of Clubs.

Example. At the very start, every Ace foundation wants a 2 and every King foundation wants a Queen. If the 2 of Spades and the Queen of Hearts are both on top of piles, each can go straight to its foundation. The cards under them are then turned face up and come into play.

2. Onto another pile

A top card can also go onto the top card of another pile when the two cards are the same suit and next to each other in rank. It does not matter which is higher. The 7 of Hearts may be placed on the 8 of Hearts or on the 6 of Hearts.

The ranks also wrap around: a King and an Ace of the same suit count as neighbors. You may put the King of Diamonds on the Ace of Diamonds, or the Ace on the King.

Example. The piles show the 9 of Spades, the 10 of Spades and the Jack of Spades on three different piles, and none of them fits a foundation yet. You can move the 9 onto the 10, which turns up a new card on the 9's old pile. But notice what that costs: the 10 is now covered, and only top cards move. The 10 cannot step onto the Jack until the 9 has gone somewhere else. Moving the 10 onto the Jack first, and then the 9 onto the 10, uncovers two new cards and leaves a tidy run of Jack, 10, 9 that can go to a foundation one card at a time.

This is the heart of the game. Every card you stack on another one has to come off again before the card under it can move.

Empty piles stay empty

When you take the last card from a pile, its place in the crescent stays empty for the rest of the game. No card may be moved into an empty space. This is very different from Klondike or FreeCell, where an empty column is the most useful spot on the table.

Moving between the two foundations of a suit

The Ace pile and the King pile of a suit grow toward each other, and somewhere in the middle they meet. When that happens, you may move the top card of one foundation onto the other foundation of the same suit, as long as it is the next card that pile wants.

Example. The Ace pile of Hearts has been built up to the 7, and the King pile of Hearts has come down to the 8. The 7 is exactly what the King pile wants next, so you may move it across. Now the Ace pile shows the 6 and the King pile shows the 7. Why bother? Because the second 6 of Hearts may be sitting on top of a pile with nowhere to go. After the move, the King pile wants a 6, and that card can be played.

The Ace and the King that started the foundations never move. In our game, tap the top card of a foundation to send it across when the move is allowed.

The Shuffle

Sooner or later no card will fit anywhere. Now you may shuffle, but it is not a shuffle in the usual sense. Nothing is mixed. Instead, you go around the crescent and, for every pile, slide out the bottom card and place it face up on top.

• Sixteen cards that were buried at the bottom are suddenly the top cards.
• The cards that were on top are now second from the top, in the same order as before.
• A pile with only one card does not change, and empty piles stay empty.

Example. A pile holds, from the bottom up: 3 of Clubs, Jack of Hearts, 9 of Spades. After a shuffle it holds Jack of Hearts, 9 of Spades, 3 of Clubs, and the 3 of Clubs is the card you can play.

You are allowed three shuffles in a game. You may shuffle at any time, not only when you are stuck, but it is nearly always best to make every useful move first. When the third shuffle is used and no more cards can move, the game is over.

House rule: for a more relaxed game, our Settings let you play with unlimited shuffles, or with every card face up so you can plan ahead.

Winning and Losing

You win when every card is on a foundation: the four Ace piles each show a King, and the four King piles each show an Ace.

You lose when cards are left in the crescent, no card can be usefully moved, and your shuffles are gone. That happens often. Crescent is a game of small victories, and getting more cards home than last time is a fair way to keep score.

Scoring

There is no official scoring. Most players simply count wins. If you would like to compare games that did not come out, count the cards on the foundations at the end.

Our game keeps count for you. The line above the table shows how many of the 104 cards are on the foundations, and the statistics record your wins, your winning streak and your fewest moves.

Playing on This Site

• Tap to move. Cards that can move have a thick outline. Tap one and it goes to a foundation if it fits there; otherwise it goes onto its neighbor on another pile.
• Choosing a place. If a card fits in more than one place, those places get a dashed outline. Tap the one you want, or tap the card again to leave it where it is.
• Shuffle. The Shuffle button shows how many shuffles you have left.
• Undo. Take back as many moves as you like, including a shuffle.
• Hint. Shows a useful move and says why. It never peeks at cards you have not seen.
• Deal numbers. Every deal has a number. Type the same number in Settings to play the same deal again, or to share it with a friend.

Rules at a Glance

Once you know the rules, our Crescent Solitaire strategy guide will help you get more cards home, and the variations page covers easier and harder ways to play. If you enjoy two-deck games, Spider solitaire is another good one to try.