Yukon Trail

What is Yukon solitaire?

Yukon is a close cousin of Klondike. You still have seven columns, you still build down in alternating colors, and you still race to fill four foundations from Ace to King. Two rules change everything: there's no deck to draw from, and you can move any face-up card along with everything on top of it, whether or not those cards are in order.

Yukon Trail plays the traditional Yukon rules and also includes Russian solitaire, the harder variation that makes you build by suit. It's free, plays in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, and there's nothing to install.

How to play Yukon solitaire

The deal

All 52 cards go onto the table. The first column gets a single face-up card. Each of the other six columns gets some face-down cards (one in the second column, two in the third, up to six in the seventh) with five face-up cards on top. You can see 31 cards right away. The other 21 are hidden under them.

The rules

• Build down in alternating colors. A card can be placed on a face-up card one rank higher of the opposite color. A black 8 goes on a red 9.
• Move any face-up card. This is the big one. Pick any face-up card in a column and it moves together with every card sitting on it. Only the card you grab has to fit its new spot. The cards riding on top can be in any order.
• Kings only in empty columns. An empty column can only take a King, along with whatever is stacked on it.
• Hidden cards flip up. When the last face-up card leaves a column, the face-down card under it turns over.
• Foundations build up by suit. Ace to King in each suit. You can pull a card back down from a foundation if you need it, at a cost of 10 points.

There's no deck and no draw pile. Everything you need is already on the table, which means every move should be on purpose.

Russian solitaire

Russian solitaire uses exactly the same deal and the same move-anything rule. The one difference: on the columns you build down in the same suit instead of alternating colors. The 7 of clubs can only go on the 8 of clubs.

That sounds small. It isn't. Each card now has exactly one card it can sit on, instead of two, so you run out of moves much faster and planning ahead becomes the whole game. Russian scores 1.5x to make up for it.

Controls

Tap any face-up card to move it, and everything on it, to the best spot we can find. Or drag it to choose for yourself. When all cards are face up and the columns are already in order, a Finish button sends everything home.

Keyboard: U or Ctrl+Z undoes, H shows a hint, F finishes, N deals again and Esc pauses. There's no limit on Undo.

Scoring

Russian multiplies everything by 1.5. Stats for Yukon, Russian and the Daily Deal are kept separately.

Winnable deals, Daily Deal and unlocks

With the Winnable deals chip turned on, Yukon Trail deals from shuffles we've checked can be won: a thousand for Yukon and five hundred for Russian. Turn it off for fully random deals. The Daily Deal is one Yukon game, the same for everyone that day.

Wins raise your rank from Snowshoer through Trail Pup (1 win), Sled Hand (3), Trapper (6), Pathfinder (10), Musher (16), Ridge Ranger (25), Mountain Guide (40) and Legend of the North (70). New scenes open too: Snowy Twilight, then Bluebird Day at 2 wins, Northern Lights at 5, Alpenglow at 10 and Blizzard Camp at 20. Card backs you earn here are shared with all our card games.

Yukon and Russian solitaire strategy

• Aim at the deep columns. The seventh column hides six cards and the sixth hides five. Most of your hidden cards live on the right, so that's where moves pay off most.
• Think of the face-up cards as handles. Because you can grab a card from the middle of a pile, the question is always which card you want to reach, and where the cards on top of it can go. Find a spot for the card just above your target and the whole chunk moves.
• Free Aces and 2s early. A low card buried in a pile blocks a foundation for the rest of the game. Moving a big messy stack off an Ace is often worth it.
• Don't build tall piles on low cards. Stacking twelve cards on a 4 means that 4 can only go home after the whole pile moves. Try to grow your piles on Kings and Queens.
• Save empty columns for the right King. Only Kings can go there, so pick the King that sits on top of the most cards you need to reach.
• In Russian, track the suits. Before a move, check where the card one rank lower in the same suit is. If it's buried under its own higher card in the same pile, you'll need to plan a way to break that pile up.
• Every face-down card is worth 5 points and a new option. When two moves look equal, take the one that flips a card.

If you like the no-deck feel, Four Cells deals everything face up and gives you four cells to work with. For a deck-based game with similar rules, Canyon Klondike is the classic.

Questions