Fun Fact: These games are fantastic for neurological development as you engage in kinesthetic play to learn to identify shapes, numbers, sequences, patterns, and even additive relationships! Improve your mathematical abstract reasoning just by playing games!
Remove the JOKERS from your tile set.
Shuffle the tiles face down and deal your playing tableau with 7 columns, from 1 to 7 tiles, increasing number of tiles in each column. The first column has one tile face up, the second column has two tiles with the first face down and the second face up, the third column has three tiles with the first two face down and the final third tile face up, etc., until you get to the last row which will have 6 tiles face down and the last seventh tile face up.
Arrange the remaining 24 tiles in a row at the top or bottom of your tableau - this will be your draw pile.
Fill the "Foundation" with the four Aces and continue to build up the foundation by suit in ascending order. You can arrange the face up tiles in the tableau in descending order and alternating colors to create "stacks." For example, a black 7 can go on a red 8; a red Queen can go on a black King. The suit only determines which pile of the foundation tiles go into, it doesn't matter if you put a spade or club on a diamond or heart and vice versa. A "stack" is a sequence of tiles you've arranged in descending order.
You can move partial or complete stacks to further build them up, but an empty tableau slot can only be filled with a King or a stack starting with a King. As you arrange face up tiles to free face down tiles, you can flip the face down tiles over and incorporate them into your stacks and/or Foundation. Use the draw pile to build your stacks, too. Once you draw a tile, either add it to a stack, the Foundation, or put it at the back of the draw pile row. You win when you clear the tableau by revealing all the face down tiles and arranging all tiles into their appropriate foundation piles. The top most tiles in each of the foundation piles can be put back into gameplay on the tableau if needed.
Challenge: Try playing 3-draw style, where you reveal three tiles at a time from the draw pile. The challenge is that you can only use the top-most tile at a time. Once you're ready to draw again, you must put all showing draw tiles to the back of the draw pile and uncover the next three.
Remove the JOKERS from your tile set.
Shuffle the tiles face down, then flip them face up as you select random ones to build your board. The board shown above - four 'towers' made up of 3 stacks of 4 tiles surrounding a central set of 4 tiles - is called the "Castle Courtyard" board.
Just as you would with Mahjong tiles, clear the board to win by matching pairs of same numbered tiles that are "open" or "exposed," meaning they have no tiles on top of them and have at least one side clear.
You lose if you run out of possible matches before clearning the board. See what other board configurations you can come up with with the 52 tiles! Increase the difficulty by only allowing matches with the same number and color; include the JOKERS as "wild" tiles in your board!
Remove the JOKERS from your tile set.
Shuffle your tiles face down, then arrange them face up into a 7-row tall pyramid with one tile at the top, followed by a row of two tiles, followed by a row of three tiles, and so on until you've reached the final row of 7 tiles. It should look like a pyramid of 28 face-up tiles.
Arrange the remaining 24 tiles face down into a row at the top or bottom of your tableau, these will be used as your stock and waste piles.
Matching and remove pairs of tiles that add to 13. Kings can be removed on their own, Aces match with Queens, Twos match with Jacks, and so on. As you match pairs, you expose more tiles of the pyramid until you win by completely clearing the tableau.
When you filp a tile from the stock pile and it doesn't match to any exposed tiles in the pyramid, move it to the waste pile and flip another tile from the stock pile. You're allowed to match tiles from the stock pile with the waste pile. If the faceup waste and stock pile tiles can't be matched with each other or any exposed tiles, flip the face up waste tile to the face down position, slide the faceup stock tile to the waste pile, then flip the next tile in the stock pile row. You'll only ever have up to two tiles face up that aren't in the pyramid, one in the waste pile and one in the stock pile. If your stock pile flip can be matched to a tile in the pyramid, you can play it without moving the face up waste tile and flip the next tile in the stock pile.
Once all the unpaired tiles from the stock pile have been moved to the waste pile, "recycle" the waste pile back to the stock pile and be sure not to distrub the order of the tiles.
Decide how many recycles you'll allow. Some games allow 1 recycle, some allow 3, and some challenge players to clear the tableau without any recycles at all.
Pull all the Aces, Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives, and Sixs out of your tile set as well as the two JOKERS and two Kings of any suit. Put the rest of the tiles away and set the JOKERs and Kings aside.
Flip your tiles face down and shuffle them. Arrange your tableau with 4 rows of 6 tiles face up. Move all the Aces to the front (left-most position) of their rows so now each row has a total of 7 spaces. If a row didn't end up with any Aces in the initial deal, take an Ace from another row and put it at the front of that row; it's okay if a row has multiple empty spaces or no empty spaces, as long as there are 7 spaces in each row and a single Ace leading in each row as well.
You can fill the spaces with the next highest tile of the same suit. For example, if there's a 3 of clubs to the left of an empty space, it can only be filled with a 4 of clubs. This rule stands even if there are multiple consecutive empty spaces. Furthermore, no spaces to the left of a 6 can be filled. You win when you arrange all the rows in ascending order from Ace to 6 in the same suit as the leading Ace.
If you run out of moves, slide away all the tiles from the tableau that aren't already in ascending order of their leading suit of Aces. Flip them face down and mix in the two JOKERS and two Kings face down as well. Shuffle, then deal tiles face up into each row so there are 7 tiles in the rows again. Remove the JOKERS and Kings to create spaces for you to continue gameplay.
Decide how many shuffles you'll allow. Some games allow only 1, some allow infinite, and some challenge players to win without any shuffles at all.
Challenge: Instead of moving the Aces to the front of each row at the beginning of gameplay, include the JOKERS and Kings in your inital deal, then remove them to create your first 4 spaces. Your goal is still the same, but your Aces won't automatically be at the front of each row. You'll have to decide what suit to build in each row by freeing the inital space and filling it with the Ace of your choice. Aces are only locked into a row once it's two of the same suit is moved into the subsequent position.
Remove the JOKERS from your tile set.
Shuffle the tiles face down and deal your playing tableau in a circular formation, positioning 4 tiles at each position of a clock, and the last 4 tiles in the center.
Win this game of luck by uncovering each tile and placing it in its corresponding placeholder on the "clock," before you reveal all 4 Kings.
Start by flipping over a tile from the middle set, then placing it in it's corresponding place on the clock, and continue by revealing an extraneous tile from that pile. Aces go in the position of 1 o'clock, numbered cards go with their corresponding value, Jacks take the position of 11 o'clock, and Queens take the position of 12 o'clock; Kings are placed in the middle. Keep your fingers crossed for a lucky deal!
Remove the JOKERS from your tile set.
Shuffle the tiles face down and deal your tableau with 4 columns of 7 tiles face up and another 4 columns with 6 tiles face up. All tiles are arranged face up on the tableau.
You can arrange the tiles in the tableau in descending order and alternating colors to create "stacks." For example, a black 7 can go on a red 8; a red Queen can go on a black King. The "Foundation" is above the first four columns and your "FreeCells" are above the last four columns. As you free tiles, fill the Foundation with the four Aces and continue to build up the foundation by suit in ascending order. Once a tile goes in the Foundation, it cannot be moved back into play. You can fill each of the FreeCells with a single tile at a time to use them as temporary holding spots.
You can move partial or complete stacks to further build them up, but you can only move a certain number of tiles at a time depending on how many "FreeCells" are available. You can move up to one more than the number of FreeCells you have available. For example, if you have all 4 FreeCells open and 1 open column, you have 5 free spaces, thus you can move 6 tiles. However, if you're filling the open column, you effectively have 4 free spaces, so you can only move up to a 5-tile stack into that column.
Unlike Solitaire, you can fill free columns with any tile or [appropriately sized] stack. You win when you clear the tableau by arranging all tiles into their appropriate foundation piles.