How to play Pyramid Solitaire

Pyramid Solitaire deals twenty-eight cards into a seven-row pyramid and asks you to take the whole thing apart by adding up to thirteen.

The values

Ace counts one, and the number cards count their face value. Jack is eleven, Queen is twelve, King is thirteen.

Any two uncovered cards whose ranks total thirteen are removed together: nine with four, ten with three, Jack with two, Queen with Ace. A King is already thirteen on its own, so it simply leaves whenever it is uncovered.

Suits are irrelevant throughout.

Which cards are playable

A pyramid card is playable only once both cards below it have gone. Every card in the pyramid is pinned by two, which is what makes the structure a puzzle rather than a sorting exercise: the card you need is almost always trapped, and freeing it means finding partners for both of its blockers first.

The top card of the waste pile is playable, and only that one. You can pair a pyramid card with the waste card, but you can never pair two waste cards together, and the face-down deck is not playable until turned.

You get three passes through the deck, which means two redeals.

The counting that decides the game

Because thirteen is fixed, the deal itself decides a great deal — and you can check it before you start.

Count the Kings. Each one is a free removal.

Then think in complementary pairs: sixes need sevens, fives need eights, fours need nines, threes need tens, twos need Jacks, Aces need Queens. If the pyramid holds four sixes and the sevens are all buried deep on the far side, that is a warning about the shape of the game rather than bad luck later.

The most common way to lose is spending a partner carelessly. If there are four Queens and four Aces in the deal and you burn two Queens on Aces from the waste, the Aces still stuck in the pyramid may have nothing left to pair with.

Order of play

Prefer removals that unlock pyramid cards over removals that only clear the waste. A pair that frees a card is progress; a pair in the waste pile is just tidying.

Look at the row above before you take a pair. If removing two cards uncovers a card whose partner has already gone, you have made the board worse rather than better.

Use the deck passes deliberately. Cards you skip on the first pass come back, so an early pass is for surveying what exists as much as for playing — and by the third pass, nothing is coming back.

Winnable deals, and how they are checked

Not every shuffle can be won. The Winnable setting runs a solver over each deal and only hands you one it has proved has a solution, so a loss is genuinely your line rather than the shuffle. Random gives you the deal unfiltered, which is the traditional experience.