Earthquake Solitaire
Earthquake Solitaire Help
Overview
Imagine you're playing a relaxing game of Klondike Solitaire, when all of sudden strong earthquakes start. Your cards are being thrown all over the table. What do you do?
Earthquake Solitaire is played exactly the same as Klondike Solitaire, and has exactly the same rules. However, the constant earthquakes change the whole strategy
of the game. Can you adjust to a new way of playing Klondike Solitaire?
Object of the Game
The object of Earthquake Solitaire is to build by suit, the 4 Foundation piles from ACE up to KING. For example: [ACE of Clubs, 2 of Clubs, 3 of Clubs, ..., JACK of Clubs, QUEEN of Clubs, KING of Clubs] (The Foundation piles are the 4 piles in the upper right of the screen).
Layout
The first pile in the upper left of the screen is the Stock pile. Cards from the Stock pile are dealt face up to the next pile to the right called the Waste pile (at the start of the game the Waste pile is just an empty space). Then to the right of that there are 4 Foundation piles.
Below that are the 7 Tableau piles.
Rules
FOUNDATION : A Foundation pile must begin with an ACE. The next card in the pile will then be a 2 of the same suit as the ACE. Continue building in the same way (3,4, 5, ... , JACK, QUEEN, KING) with all the cards being of the same suit. The other 3 Foundation piles are built the same way -- (ascending rank, same suit).
TABLEAU : With the Tableau pile, you can place on any face up card, a face up card of one lower rank and of opposite color (e.g. on a 9 of Clubs, you can place
an 8 of Hearts or an 8 of Diamonds). You can also drag and drop a group of cards from one Tableau pile to another Tableau pile, providing that the first card
in the dragged group follows the previously mentioned rule. (The only time in the game you can drag a group of cards, is from one Tableau pile to another Tableau pile).
When a Tableau pile has only face down cards, click on the last face down card to turn it over. When a Tableau pile becomes empty, any KING (or group of cards starting
with a KING) may be placed in that empty pile.
STOCK : Cards in the Stock pile may be played to the Waste pile one at a time, or three at a time ("Options / Cheats" menu chooses which one). There are two
versions of playing 3 cards at a time. In regular 3 at a time, a group of 3 cards will stay in the same order (assuming none of the 3 cards are played to the
Tableau or Foundation). In 3 rotating, the 1st card and the 3rd card, in a group of 3 cards, will switch positions (again assuming none of those 3 cards are played anywhere). That way the first card, which is blocked, will become the last card the next time the stock pile is played (and now will be unblocked and playable). (When playing with actual physical cards, "3 rotating" is equivalent to holding the Stock pile in your left hand, then dealing the top 3 cards one at a time face down to your right hand, then turning over as a group the 3 cards in your right hand and placing them on the table).
WASTE : The last card in the Waste pile is playable to the Tableau or the Foundation, and then the card underneath it (which now becomes the last card) then becomes playable. No cards from the Tableau or Foundation can be played onto the Waste pile.
Interface
Left-click the top Stock card to turn it over and move it to the Waste pile. Left-click face-down cards in the Tableau to turn them over. Drag and drop to move a card (or group of cards) from one pile to another. In addition to dragging and dropping to move a card to a Foundation pile, you can also double-click or right-click a card to auto-move it to the Foundation. Also, to auto-move all playable cards to the Foundation, double-click or right-click on any card in any Foundation pile. To temporarily move a face-up Tableau card to the foreground in order to see what suit it is (this is not cheating), hold down the ALT key and then MouseDown on the card. When you MouseUp the card will move back to underneath the cards that came after it. To take a peek at what cards are in a Tableau pile (including face-down cards), hold down the CTRL key and MouseDown on the last Face Up card. When you Mouse Up, cards that had been face-down will return to their face-down state. (NOTE : In Opera holding down CTRL and left-clicking will bring up the "SAVE AS" dialog. Instead, hold down the SHIFT key.)
Menu Options
GAME : "Restart Game" will start the current game over from the beginning; that is, the cards will be re-dealt to the table without shuffling the deck.
"New Game" will start a new game of Earthquake; that is, the deck will be shuffled and then dealt to the table.
"Solitaire Games..." will take you to the home page where you can choose to play a different solitaire game.
OPTIONS / CHEATS : Here you can choose how often earthquake tremors happen, and whether to flip Stock cards one-at-a-time or three-at-a-time to the Waste pile.
(NOTE : The option to cheat by moving any card to an empty Tableau pile has been removed. With Earthquake Solitaire every game is winnable, providing you have
the patience to wait for the card you need to become accessible after an earthquake. So there's no need to have the option to move any card to an empty Tableau pile.)
BACKGROUND : Here you can choose a background image for the table, and a background color for the rest of the window.
DECK : Here you can choose a different card deck.
HELP : Choose this to get the rules for the game, and also how to interact with the game.
UNDO MOVE : You can undo moves all the way back to the beginning of the game.
Cheats
To help you win the game, the program gives you the opportunity to "bend" the standard rules :
UNDO : Don't like which card you picked to drag to another pile? Just undo that move (or moves) and pick another card. You can undo moves all the way back to the beginning of the game.
PEEKING : You can peek at what cards are in any pile by holding down the CTRL or the SHIFT key and pressing MouseDown. A list of cards that are in that pile will display at the bottom of the "table" area. In addition, if you peek at a Tableau pile, it will also temporarily turn over any face-down cards in that pile.
NOTE : Holding down the ALT key and doing a MouseDown to temporarily bring a card to the foreground is not cheating. With some cards(in certain card decks) that are overlapped by other cards, you can not determine what suit they are. Alt-clicking on the card brings the card to the foreground which then enables you to tell that the card is an ACE of diamonds, not an ACE of hearts, for example.