How to Play Clock Solitaire
Deal the clock
Thirteen piles of four cards, face down: one at each hour (Ace at 1 o'clock up to Queen at 12) and the Kings' pile in the middle.
Turn and tuck
Turn the top card of the middle pile, slip it face up under the pile for its hour, then turn the top card of that same pile.
Kings go to the middle
Kings are tucked under the middle pile. When the fourth King turns up, the deal is over.
Finish the clock
You win if every card was turned before the last King. That happens about once in every 13 deals.
There are no choices to make, so Clock is a calm game to play through, almost like counting beads. Two buttons make it gentler still. Always comes out deals only clocks that finish. Keep playing lets you carry on after an early fourth King.
About Clock
Status: Living. Clock is still widely played with a real deck, especially as a first patience for children.
Clock belongs to a family of “shuttling” patiences, where a card goes to the bottom of a pile and the next card comes from the top of that same pile. Ednah Cheney printed it as “The Clock” in Patience: A Series of Games with Cards (Boston, 1869). In the same book she describes the older “Wandering Card”, which she says came from Europe. Later writers recorded the game under other names, including Sundial, Watch, Hidden Cards and Travellers.
The “Keep playing” button lets you carry on after an early fourth King. You turn the top card of any pile that’s still face down and go on from there, until every card is turned. It’s a gentler cousin of an old variant called Watch, where the fourth King was swapped back into the deck and play went on until that King came round again.
Clock is a purely mechanical game. Once the cards are shuffled, the result is already decided. Mathematicians have worked out that exactly 1 deal in 13 comes out. That’s why our “Always comes out” button simply plays deals through until it finds one that finishes, and then gives it to you.
Sources
- Ednah D. Cheney, Patience: A Series of Games with Cards (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1869), pp. 66–69 (“The Clock”).
- David Parlett, The Penguin Book of Patience (1979): Travellers and its variants, including Watch.
- Alphonse Moyse Jr., 150 Ways to Play Solitaire (1950), pp. 15–16.
- Eric W. Weisstein, “Clock Solitaire”, MathWorld: the chance of winning is 1/13.
- Summaries: Clock (card game) and Travellers (card game), Wikipedia.