Corona Solitaire is a fun solitaire game, requiring skill, planning, and patience. There are decisions to make throughout the game, but you may not know if the game can be finished until the very last card. It is quite an obscure solitaire game, but those that play it find it immensely fun… in fact, it’s one of my personal favourites, and I can’t stop playing!
The aim is to build 8 ascending suit sequences in the foundation stacks.
The opening tableau is maed up of 2 decks, and consists of:
- 8 foundation stacks, which are all empty,
- 12 manoeuvre stacks, each with 3 face-up cards, and
- a talon, with 68 face-down cards.
Cards can be moved in the manoeuvre zone if they are the same suit and 1 less in
rank. So a 7 of Diamonds can be played onto an 8 of Diamonds, and a Queen of
Spades can be played onto a King of Spades. Kings cannot be moved in the
manoeuvre zone at all.
When a manoeuvre stack becomes empty, a card is automatically taken from the top
of the waste pile. If the waste pile is empty, a card is automatically taken from the
talon.
Clicking the talon will move a single card to the waste pile. You can only cycle
through the talon once.
Only a single card can be moved at any time, and stacks can not be moved as a
whole.
Whilst the rules seem simple, the game itself is quite complex, often requiring
considerable planning. In particular, deciding when exactly to clear a stack can have
a huge impact on the game, because it changes what cards you currently have in
play. It often pays to hold-off on clearing a stack, so that a more valuable card is
put into play.
At the start of the game, it helps to look for inversions. This is where a card is
obscured by the same suit but higher rank. For example, a 2 of Diamonds
underneath a 7 of Diamonds. Inversions can make the underneath card hard to
expose, and not paying attention to them can cause games to become unsolvable. It
often pays to try and move inversions where possible, so in the example above, it
would be beneficial to move the 7 of Diamonds onto an 8 of Diamonds, to get
access to the 2, rather than put a 6 of Diamonds onto the 7.
If you play solitaire, or like a challenge, then give Corona Solitaire a go… I’m sure
you’ll love it!