Canfield Solitaire
Canfield came out of the casinos, where you bought the deck and were paid per card you got home. It keeps a thirteen-card reserve at your elbow and starts the suit piles on whatever rank happens to turn up first.
How to play Canfield Solitaire
One card is dealt to the first suit pile — its rank is the starting rank for all four piles, which are built upwards in suit and go round the corner from King to Ace.
Four columns are dealt below, built downwards in alternating colours. A pile of thirteen reserve cards sits to the left; its top card is always available. When a column empties it is refilled from the reserve automatically.
Tap the draw pile to turn over three cards at a time onto the face-up pile. You may go through the pile as often as you like.
Canfield is one of the harder solitaires; a win is something to be proud of.
You can play entirely with the keyboard: Tab puts a cursor on the table, the arrow keys move it, Enter picks a card up and puts it down, and S reads out everything on the table.
Questions people ask
Why do the piles not start at Ace?
One card is turned at the start and whatever it is sets the rank for all four suit piles. They run on from there and wrap around past the King back to the Ace.
What is the reserve for?
It is a stack of thirteen cards you can only take from the top. Working it down is the whole game — cards stuck under the reserve are the usual reason a deal fails.
Is it winnable?
In the casino version, rarely, which was the point. Deals here are checked before they are dealt, so yours can be won — but you will still have to work for it.