Yukon Solitaire Rules: How to Play and Win

The deal

Yukon starts like Klondike and then keeps going. Seven columns are dealt in the usual staircase — one card in the first column, two in the second, up to seven in the seventh — with only the top card of each turned face up. Then the remaining 24 cards are dealt face up, four onto each of the last six columns. That leaves thirty-one cards showing, twenty-one still hidden, and no stock or waste pile at all.

The one move that defines Yukon

In Klondike, a group of cards can only move if it is a tidy alternating run. Yukon throws that requirement out. You may grab any face-up card and everything resting on it, in whatever order those cards happen to sit, and move the whole bundle. Legality is judged by one card only: the card at the bottom of the group you grabbed.

• The bottom card of the group must be the opposite colour and exactly one rank lower than the card it lands on.
• The cards riding on top of it are ignored — any ranks, any suits, any order.
• The destination must be a face-up card. You can never build onto a face-down one.
• An empty column takes a King, or a group whose bottom card is a King.
• Ace-to-King foundations build up by suit. Only one card goes up at a time, and the top foundation card may be pulled back to the table if you need it.

That freedom is a trap as often as it is a gift. A move you can make is not the same as a move you should make — the question is always whether it frees a hidden card.

Why the face-down cards are the whole game

Twenty-one cards begin hidden, and they are the only unknown in the entire game. Everything else is visible, which means Yukon is a pure planning puzzle: no draw can rescue you, and no shuffle can save a bad position. Your job is to peel face-down cards away one at a time, and the move that does that beats the move that merely looks clever.

How to approach a Yukon deal

• Rank the columns by how many hidden cards they hold, and work the deepest ones first.
• Use the loose move rule to reorganise: shuffle a blocking card sideways so the card you actually need comes free.
• Resist dumping a jumbled pile onto a good column. You can always do it later; you cannot always undo it.
• Hold an empty column open until a King arrives to start a fresh run on it.
• Hunt the Aces early. With no stock to refill from, an Ace buried at the bottom of a column can quietly kill the whole deal.

Yukon next to its relatives

If Yukon appeals, the same grab-anything idea carries into Scorpion Solitaire rules. To try the idea on the table, deal a hand of Yukon Solitaire, or step back to the family overview in How to play solitaire.