How to play Beleaguered Castle

Beleaguered Castle is an old patience with no stock, no free cells and no hidden cards. The four Aces are taken out first and become the foundations - the castle - and the other 48 cards are dealt face up into eight rows around it. Your task is to build all four suits up to the King, moving one card at a time.

Because everything is visible, Beleaguered Castle is pure planning. Columns build down regardless of suit, so most cards have several possible homes, but you can only ever move the card on top. The whole game turns on emptying a column: an empty column is the only spare space you will ever get, and using it well is what separates a win from a dead end.

How to play on skill.games

When you open the game, the settings popup appears. Choose a level - Easy, Normal or Hard (Streets and Alleys) - check your record at that level and press PLAY. The cards fly onto the table and the game begins.

• Moving cards: tap a card and it goes to its best place: a foundation when that is safe, otherwise a card one rank higher (of the same suit if there is one), otherwise an empty column.
• Dragging: drag a card and drop it where you want it. A move that isn't allowed is refused: the card shakes and slides back.
• Double tap a card to send it straight to a foundation.
• Undo: the UNDO button at the top takes back your last move, as many times as you like, all the way back to the deal. On a computer, Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z) works too.
• The score line at the top shows your moves, the time and your score.

In the traditional layout the eight rows stretch sideways to the left and right of the Aces. Here they stand as eight columns under the foundations (on a wide screen, two foundations on each side), so every card is easy to reach on a phone. The rules are the same.

When the rest of the cards can simply be played up, the game finishes for you. Once all four foundations reach their Kings, the cards cascade off the table and the results screen shows your moves, time and score, with your statistics for that level: wins, losses, win rate and streaks.

The menu button in the top-left corner pauses the game, starts a new deal or turns the sound off. The "?" button opens this guide. The deal is saved after every move, so you can close the page and press CONTINUE next time - even your undo history comes back. A deal you abandon by starting a new one counts as a loss at its level.

Rules

The layout. The four Aces are placed on the foundations. The remaining 48 cards are dealt face up into eight columns of six. (In Streets and Alleys, on Hard, the Aces are shuffled in as well: all 52 cards are dealt, seven to each of the first four columns and six to the others, and the foundations start empty.)

Foundations. Each foundation builds up in one suit from the Ace to the King. Cards played to a foundation stay there.

Building in the columns. The top card of a column can be placed on the top card of another column that is one rank higher, whatever its suit: any 8 on any 9. Nothing can be placed on an Ace.

One card at a time. Only the top card of a column moves. To save you tapping, the game will carry a run of cards in descending order as one move - but only when the empty columns would let you move them one by one anyway: two cards with one empty column, four with two, and half that when the run is going into an empty column itself. With no empty column, every move is a single card.

Empty columns. Any card can be placed in an empty column.

Scoring. Every card played to a foundation scores 10 points. Every 30 seconds of play costs 30 points, although your score never drops below zero. When you win, a time bonus of 600,000 divided by the seconds you took is added. Undoing a move takes its points back, and an undo counts as a move.

Winning. You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations.

Strategy tips

• Aim for an empty column. Find the column with the fewest cards, or the one whose cards have the easiest homes, and work to clear it. Everything becomes possible once you have one.
• Don't spend the empty column cheaply. Putting a single card in it just to make one move can leave you with no spare space at all. Use it to unlock a chain of moves, and try to empty it again afterwards.
• Watch the 2s and 3s. The low cards of each suit are what the foundations need next. A 2 under five cards is a problem you should start solving at once.
• Build in suit when you can. Any suit is allowed, but a run of one suit can later go up to its foundation card by card without being split. Mixed runs have to be taken apart again.
• Avoid burying low cards under high ones. Placing a Queen's stack on top of a 3 can lock that 3 away for the rest of the game.
• Look before you lift. Since every card is visible, play a few moves ahead in your head. Undo is there for when a plan doesn't work, so test ideas freely.

Difficulty levels

• Easy: Beleaguered Castle with the Aces out, and every deal is one our computer player has already solved, so each Easy game can be won. If you get stuck, undo and look for the way out.
• Normal: a random deal of classic Beleaguered Castle. Roughly half of the deals can be won, and planning decides most of them.
• Hard (Streets and Alleys): the Aces are dealt into the columns too, so even starting a foundation takes work. Fewer deals can be won, and every empty column is hard-earned.