Pyramid Solitaire

Twenty-eight cards form a pyramid, with extra cards in a stock pile. Remove cards by pairing two exposed cards whose values add up to 13. A card is exposed only once the two cards beneath it are gone. Clear the entire pyramid to win.

• Pair cards that sum to 13: A+Q, 2+J, 3+10, 4+9, 5+8 and 6+7
• A King is worth 13 and removes by itself in a single click
• Draw from the stock to the waste pile to free up more pairings, a single pass through the deck

• Desktop: click an exposed card to select it, then click a second to make a sum-of-13 pair; click a King to remove it alone. Click the stock to draw, and Undo to step back.
• Phone & tablet: tap exposed cards to pair them, tap a King to clear it, and tap the stock to deal the next card.

• Daily deal, the same shuffle for everyone each day
• Practice, fresh random deals as often as you like
• Unlimited undo to explore different lines of play

• Plan a few pairs ahead, clearing the wrong card can strand the one you needed under it
• Hold a card you can reuse rather than burning both halves of a pair too early
• The stock only passes once, so don't draw faster than you can use the waste card

Pyramid belongs to what patience writers call the Simple Addition family, and like most solitaires it has no recorded inventor and no first printing worth citing. These games were played for a long time before anyone thought them worth writing down.

The rule is arithmetic rather than sequence: twenty-eight cards are laid in a pyramid, and cards are removed in pairs that total thirteen — the value of a king, which therefore goes out alone. Jacks count eleven and queens twelve.

It is much harder than it looks. Under the strictest rules the odds of winning sit at roughly one deal in fifty, because every card is blocked by the two beneath it and the order of the stock decides most games before the first move is made.

Pyramid Solitaire is a traditional single-player card patience game, here rebuilt as an original, free browser version with daily deals, endless practice and unlimited undo.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.