ZOLITAIRE : V2

There are five different piles of cards in Zolitaire:

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1. Tableau

Eight columns of cards that make up the main Tableau.

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2. Wild Cards

You have four Wild Cards - use them wisely. Until they land in the lock pile, they can be any letter you want them to be.

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3. Stock Pile

After laying out the tableau at the beginning of a game, the remaining cards form the Stock Pile from which additional cards are brought into play.

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4. Waste Stack

Cards from the stock pile that have no place in the tableau and are laid face up three at a time into the Waste Stack.

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5. Lock Pile

Cards that have been combined to make words of five or more letters, and have been removed from play.

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Shuffle the Deck

Shuffle the deck and begin by laying down eight cards face-up in a single row to form the tableau. The remaining cards go face down in the single stack called the Stock Pile.

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Start Play

Turn the top three cards of the Stock Pile over, beginning the Waste Stack. You can only pick up the top card from the Waste Stack. If you cannot use the top card, lay down another three. If you can use the top card, continue to work your way down, one at a time.

NOTE : If you prefer, you can turn over only one card at a time. This makes it easier to win, but takes away part of the challenge.

Continue Play

Play can move forward in one of two ways :

  1. Laying down a new card into the tableau from the Waste Stack, either at the bottom of a column or into an empty space.
  2. Moving one or more letters from the bottom of a column, either to another column or to an empty space in the tableau. If you move more than one letter, they cannot be re-arranged, but must stay in sequence.

Say it Out Loud

A letter or series of letters can only be moved to the bottom of a column if you can say a word OUT LOUD made up of five letters or more, beginning with that letter combination. The louder the better. This is an honour system. Be good.

In the example below you would have yelled out JEERS! and THANK!

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Refill

Fill the empty spaces with cards from the Stock Pile.

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Lock Stack

Once a column has a five-letter word (or more) it can be turned over and set aside in the Lock Pile) - this frees up that space for a new letter.

In the example below, pick up JEERS and move it to the Lock Pile.

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Refill

In the example below, you could yell THANKFUL! and then move the K, F and U to the right hand column.

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Refill

After refilling again, you may find (as in the example below) that you can no longer move anything around. At this point it is time to turn over your first three cards into the Waste Stack.

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Refill

Woohoo! You turned up an L! Lock away THANKFUL! and keep on trucking along.

If there had been an empty column, you could have moved FUL into it yelling FULSOME! or something along those lines, and then locked away only THANK.

If you hadn't landed an L, you could have put your first Wild Card into play - but remember, you only have four of them, and those Qs and Zs are extremely difficult to get rid of late in the game.

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Refill

Move the Q up to the empty space where THANKFUL used to be and continue on.

New Cards

To get new cards from the Stock Pile, continue to turn three cards at a time face up into the Waste Stack. When you get to the bottom of the Stock Pile, if you still have one or two cards in your Stock, turn over the Waste stack, take either one, two or three cards from that pile to make a pile of three, and begin again.

Winning

The game is won when all letters have been used.  Judicious use of Wild Cards will increase your chance of success. Reducing the number you use makes the game CONSIDERABLY harder to win.

ALLOWABLE WORDS

No proper nouns, acronyms, abbreviated, or hyphenated words are allowed. Anything else is fair game. 

Two Person Zolitaire (yes, I know)

Two-Person Zolitaire - Low Stress Version

 

  1. The deck is split in two.
  2. The two players face each other, each with a four columns Tableau of their own.
  3. Play proceeds as listed above.
  4. The winner is the one with the most words in their Lock pile - either when one player has run out of cards, or when both players have run out of moves, whichever comes first.

Two-Person Zolitaire - High Stress Version

 

  1. The deck is split in two.
  2. The two players face each other, with eight columns between them.
  3. Each player has their own Stock Pile, Waste Pile and Lock Pile, and they share a Tableau of eight cards.
  4. Play proceeds as listed above.
  5. The winner is the one with the most words in their Lock pile - either when one player has run out of cards, or when both players have run out of moves, whichever comes first.
  6. Whoever finishes a word puts it in their Lock pile.
  7. Whoever empties a slot fills it from their Stock pile.
  8. The winner is the one with the most words in their Lock pile when no more moves are possible.
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