Forty Thieves Solitaire

How to play

1. How is a Forty Thieves game dealt?: Two decks, 104 cards. Forty cards are dealt face up into ten columns of four — on a phone the ten columns sit in two rows of five, each headed by its number 1–10. The eight stone niches at the top are the foundations; the face-down pile at the bottom left is the stock, with the waste next to it. Buried cards show a strip along their top edge, so every rank and suit stays readable.
2. How do you move cards in Forty Thieves?: Tap a card: it lifts together with the same-suit run on top of it, every legal spot glows blue and the preferred one gets a small arrow. Tap a glowing spot to move there, or tap the selection again to send it to the preferred spot. A single card with only one place to go flies there straight away. Use ▲ (take one more) and ▼ (take one fewer) on the selection bar to adjust the run.
3. How does the Forty Thieves stock work?: Each tap on the stock turns one card onto the waste; the top waste card can go onto a column or home to a foundation. In Classic you go through the stock once and turned cards never come back; Relaxed lets you redeal once. When there are still moves on the table, the stock shows “Moves left on the table”, but it never blocks you.
4. How do you win Forty Thieves?: Build all 104 cards up by suit from ace to king on the eight foundations. With “Auto-play safe cards” on, low cards that can no longer be needed for building go home as part of your move; when the stock and waste are empty and the rest can go straight home, a Finish button appears. The results card records moves, time, undos and hints, and fewer moves on the same deal number is a new record.

Rules & variants

Forty Thieves basic rules: two standard 52-card decks without jokers, 104 cards. Forty cards are dealt into ten columns of four, all face up; the remaining 64 form the stock. There are eight foundations, two per suit, each built up in suit from ace to king. Get all 104 cards home to win. There are no free cells, and cards on the foundations never come back down.

Building on the columns: cards build down by one in the same suit only — the 8♠ goes on the 9♠, never on the 9♥. An empty column takes any card, and empty columns are the most valuable resource in Forty Thieves. Aces and kings do not wrap.

Classic moves one card at a time: to move a same-suit run, the game splits it into legal single-card moves through empty columns, so you can move up to 2 to the power of the number of empty columns. If the target itself is an empty column it cannot be used as a stop, so the limit halves — one empty column lets you move 2 cards onto another card but only 1 into the empty column. Relaxed lets you move a whole same-suit run at once, with no limit.

The stock and waste: each tap turns one stock card face up onto the waste, and only the top waste card is playable — onto a column or home. In Classic the stock goes through once. In Relaxed you may turn the whole waste back over once, and the second pass comes out in exactly the same order as the first.

A worked example: column 3 ends, bottom to top, in K♦ 9♠ 8♠ 7♠; column 6 ends in 10♠; there is one empty column. Tap the 9♠ and the three cards lift, but the selection bar reads “Max 2 at once” and column 6 does not light up. Free a second empty column first and the limit becomes 4 — now the run moves onto the 10♠, shown card by card through the empty columns, and the move counter goes up by one.

Forty Thieves strategy: 1) empty columns matter more than anything — clear one early and use it to move long runs; 2) the stock is one-way, so play the table out before turning a card; 3) with twin cards, move the copy that frees more cards behind it; 4) don't rush every low card home — a 3 may still be needed on the table to hold a 2; 5) experiment freely, undo is unlimited.

Winnable deals and the no-progress warning: by default this page only deals games an offline solver proved winnable, and the deal number lets you share the exact game. Winnable assumes the stock order is known, which you cannot see, so you can still play into a lost position. Once the stock is used up the page checks in the background whether any card can still go home, and if none can it says so and offers undo, resign or replay. Turn off “Winnable deals only” in the menu for fully random deals.

Forty Thieves compared with other solitaires: Spider also uses two decks and ten columns, but most of its cards start face down and full king-to-ace runs leave the table; Forty Thieves starts fully face up, builds the foundations from ace up and its stock goes through once, so it rewards planning. FreeCell has the same one-card-at-a-time limit through free spaces but uses one deck. Variants such as Lucas (aces start on the foundations, 13 columns), Sixty Thieves and three-deck games are not offered here — only Classic and Relaxed.

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