The rules of Crescent

The setup

The game uses 2 shuffled 52-card decks: 104 cards, each one in two copies. The app sets aside one Ace and one King of each suit: these are the bases of the 8 foundations. The other 96 cards form 16 piles of 6 cards, all face up.

On screen, the piles form a horseshoe: 4 piles on the left, 8 at the top, 4 on the right. The foundations are in the center, the four Aces on the first row, the four Kings below. The app shows only the top card of each pile: the cards underneath are revealed as you play the top one. The diagrams on this site follow this layout and add, under each card, the pile number and its card count.

Allowed moves

• You move only one card at a time, and only the top card of a pile.
• Onto another pile, it is placed on a card of the same suit and adjacent rank, one higher or one lower: the 8 of hearts on the 9 or on the 7 of hearts.
• Ranks wrap around: the Ace goes on the King of the same suit, and the King on the Ace.
• A pile holds at most 13 cards; beyond that, the app refuses: "This pile is full; choose another destination".

Example from the won game on the Examples page: on move 10, the A♠ from pile 10 goes onto the K♠ on pile 14.

If a move breaks the rule, the app refuses it and, with interactive rules, gives the reason: "Must be the same suit", "Must be one rank higher or lower".

The empty pile

A pile that has been emptied stays empty until the end: no card can be placed on it ("Cannot place on an empty pile"). Each emptied pile therefore removes one place to put cards.

The foundations

• The four Ace foundations build up: Ace, 2, 3… up to the King, in the suit of their Ace.
• The four King foundations build down: King, Queen, Jack… down to the Ace, in the suit of their King.
• On a foundation, ranks do not wrap around: nothing goes on an ascending King or on a descending Ace.
• A card never returns from a foundation to a pile. It can move from one foundation to the other of the same suit, if it follows the top card.
• The base card, the Ace or King placed at the start, never moves ("The foundation base is locked").

The redeal

The Redeal button takes, in each pile of two or more cards, the bottom card and places it on top; the order of the other cards does not change. You get 3 redeals per game; the button shows how many are left, then displays "No redeals left". A redeal does not count as a move, and moves played before it can no longer be undone.

Example: at the first redeal of the won game, pile 1 goes from 2♥ 9♣ J♦ J♦ (bottom to top) to 9♣ J♦ J♦ 2♥: the 2♥ from the bottom is now on top.

The end of the game

The game is won when each of the 8 foundations has 13 cards: all 104 cards are there. It is blocked when no move is possible and no redeals remain: the app announces it and offers to undo the last move or start a new game.

What the app adds

• Tap a pile: if only one place accepts its top card, the card goes there; otherwise the pile is selected and you tap the destination. Double-tap and drag-and-drop also work.
• Drop on the foundations: a card dropped anywhere in the foundations area goes to the foundation of its suit that accepts it.
• Undo: up to the last 100 moves; the move counter goes back down. After a redeal, the history starts over from zero.
• Game code: every deal has a code (for example CR1-N-AAAAAAB) that brings back the exact same deal.
• No score: the app counts time and moves.

The app's choices and the traditional rule

The app follows the traditional rule described in solitaire books: bases set aside, piles of six, building by suit in both directions with wrapping from King to Ace, an empty pile never refilled, three redeals. It deals all cards face up, and the screen shows only the top card, which comes to the same thing for the player. The literature also mentions variants that the app does not offer: Crescent Four (a fourth redeal is allowed); face-down dealing (only the top card of each pile is turned over at the start; the others are turned over when they are uncovered).