How to play
Clock Solitaire, also known as Clock Patience or Travellers, is the patience you play when you want the cards to do the thinking. The 52 cards are dealt face down into 13 piles of four. Twelve piles sit in a ring like the numbers on a clock face, marked Hour 1 to Hour 12, and the thirteenth sits in the centre.
Each rank has a home. An ace belongs at 1 o’clock, a 2 through 10 at the hour with the same number, a jack at 11, a queen at 12, and a king in the centre.
The turn sequence. Play always starts at the centre. Press Turn card and the top face-down card of the current pile flips over and travels to its home, where it is placed face up on top of that pile. Whichever pile just received the card becomes the next pile to turn from. So if the centre gives you a 7, the 7 goes to 7 o’clock and your next card comes from under it; if that turns out to be a jack, it goes to 11 o’clock and you continue there.
The end. Every card you turn counts as one move, shown with the clock in the top bar. The deal is lost when you are sent to a pile that has no face-down cards left; the message reads “The fourth king came up”. It is won when all 52 cards are face up, which takes exactly 52 moves.
Why only the kings can stop you
This looks like it could jam anywhere, but it can’t. Think about the 5 o’clock pile. You only ever arrive there because a 5 was just turned, and there are four 5s in the deck. The pile also started with four face-down cards. Each visit uses one of them, so you can never arrive at 5 o’clock and find it empty while a 5 is still to come. The same goes for every hour.
The centre is the odd one out. You took one card from it at the very start without a king sending you there. That spends one of its four hidden cards in advance, so by the time the fourth king arrives, the centre is empty. That is the only place the game can stop: the fourth king ends it, and you win only if the fourth king is the very last card of the 52 to turn up.
The odds
The chance of that is exactly 1 in 13, about 7.7%. It is one of the neatest classic results in card-game probability: the deal works out as if you were asking whether a king happens to be the final card, and every rank is equally likely to be last. A run of ten losses in a row is completely ordinary; a win every dozen or so deals is what to expect.
Your progress in a lost deal can vary a lot. Sometimes the kings arrive early and you stop after a dozen moves; sometimes you sit on 49 face-up cards and watch the last king appear one card too soon.
Strategy
There is none, and it’s worth being straight about it. Every move is forced: the deal fixes the result before the first card turns. The Hint button only points at the pile you have to turn next, and Undo steps back a card, but the hidden card underneath stays the same, so you will turn up exactly the same thing again.
What you can do is choose how you enjoy it:
- Play it fast. Tap through a deal in under a minute and keep your own tally of wins against the 1-in-13 expectation.
- Play it slow. Before each turn, guess which hour the next card will go to. With four piles already half finished, you can sometimes rule out ranks.
- Count kings. Kings land face up on the centre pile, so you can always see how many have appeared. With three kings out and plenty of cards still face down elsewhere, you know the next king will end the deal; seeing the last few piles empty first is the tense part.
If you want a solitaire where your choices decide the outcome, Klondike is the classic, and Golf Solitaire is quick in the same spirit as Clock but rewards planning.
If you enjoy Clock Solitaire, try Color Clash or Cribbage next.
