Sweetpea Trellis

What is Sweetpea Trellis?

It's an original solitaire we designed around one idea: the cards you clear should grow something you can keep. Most solitaires send cards to foundations by suit. Here you grow runs instead, cards in a row by rank with any suits, and every run you snip turns into a plant. Hearts grow roses and blossom, diamonds grow golden flowers, clubs grow leaves and trees, and spades grow cool blue flowers. A short run makes a tulip. A run of eight or more makes a whole tree.

After each deal you pick plants from your harvest and set them in your garden. The garden opens new areas as it grows, earns things like a birdbath, a rose arch and a lily pond, and draws visitors such as butterflies, bees and a hedgehog. Sweetpea Trellis is free and plays in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with no download.

How to play

A classic deal puts 35 cards face up in seven beds of five and the other 17 in the seed packet. The top card of each bed is free, and so is the top card on the tray next to the packet. Tap the packet to turn over a new card. When it runs out you can turn it over and go through it once more.

Grow runs on the trellises

There are three trellises. Put any free card on an empty trellis to start a run. A run then grows one step at either end, so 5 6 7 takes a 4 or an 8. Suits can mix. Ace is low only and King is high only, so runs never wrap around. Dotted marks at each end of a run show the ranks it needs, and a crossed mark means every card of that rank is already gone.

Snip when you choose

Once a run has three or more cards, tap the shears to snip it. That clears the trellis and grows a plant. You can snip right away or wait for the run to get longer. If a run can't grow anymore because the cards it needs are gone, we snip it for you (you can turn that off in Settings).

Resting cards and finishing

An empty bed can hold any one free card, which is handy for digging out a card you need. Use every card and the bed is in full bloom. Anything left on a trellis at the very end is harvested as a seedling. If nothing can move, you can undo or finish the bed where it is.

Scoring

Scores are counted in petals. Long runs are worth far more than short ones, so the real game is deciding when to snip.

Modes

• Garden Path: 120 levels in six chapters. We check every deal can be won. Clearing a level earns one star, and two score marks shown at the top earn the second and third. Every fifth level from 15 on is a tricky one, followed by an easier breather.
• Daily Bed: one classic deal, the same for everyone each day (it changes at midnight UTC). Your first finished run counts for the leaderboard. Replays are practice and never change your score.
• Garden Show: a tougher deal once a week with a twist. Your first run earns a blue, red or yellow ribbon depending on how close you get to our best score.
• Open Bed: endless winnable deals at Gentle (four trellises, three turns through the packet), Classic or Keen (one turn and frosted beds).

Garden Path chapters

Cottage Patch starts with small decks and grows to the full 52 cards. Frost Hollow adds frosted cards that stay face down until they reach the top of their bed. Bee Meadow puts bees on some cards for bonus petals. Bramble Bank wraps a bed in thorns that fall away when you snip a run at least as long as the number on it. Ladybug Lawn adds a ladybug card that stands in for any rank at the end of a run. The Glasshouse mixes them all, and some of its beds give you only one turn through the packet.

Your garden

The suit with the most cards in a run picks the plant family, the length picks the size, and a single-suit run grows an heirloom with its own colors and a little shimmer. The exact cards shape petal counts and height, so no two gardens look alike. New plants fill out over three days, so there's always something new when you come back. Plants never wilt.

Tap any plant to see the run it came from. Use Arrange to move plants or swap two of them. The garden opens six areas in all, from the Cottage Patch to the Glasshouse, as you plant more or travel further along the path. The sky follows your local time of day, and the garden changes with the seasons.

The Almanac tracks all 40 kinds of plant. Milestones in play also earn table cloths and card backs. The card backs are shared with every card game on our site.

Tips and strategy

• Before you start a run, look for its neighbors. A 7 with a 6 and an 8 already free is a much better start than a lonely King.
• Don't fill all three trellises with short runs that are waiting on buried cards. Keep one trellis free if you can, and snip a run of three early when you need the space.
• Count what's gone. If both 9s you need are already in other runs, that 8 10 J run can only grow downward. The dotted marks show this, so glance at them before you commit.
• Kings and Aces only grow in one direction. Start them early, when plenty of their neighbors are still around.
• Chase heirlooms when it's cheap. A run of four in one suit is worth as much as a run of five with mixed suits.
• Use empty beds to dig. Resting one card can free the card under it, and that's often the card a waiting run needs.
• In the Daily Bed, think before you undo. Each undo or hint takes 25 off the 300-point steady hand bonus.

Questions