Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne is about the simplest patience game with a decision in it. Four Aces as foundations, four waste piles, and a deck dealt four cards at a time. Foundations build up to King and suit is completely irrelevant.

What you cannot do is the whole point: nothing may be built in the tableau, and a card placed on a waste pile can never move again except onto a foundation. So the entire game is the repeated question of which of four piles to bury a card in, and how well you answer it is the only thing separating a win from the far more common loss. Its harder sibling, Tam O'Shanter, does not even hand you the Aces.

The four Aces are taken out and set up as foundations, then the rest of the deck is dealt four cards at a time — one to each of four waste piles. Foundations build up from Ace to King with suit ignored entirely. There is no tableau building whatsoever: a card that lands on a waste pile stays there, and only the top card of each pile is available to go up to a foundation. When the stock is gone, so is the game.

There is exactly one decision and it is which waste pile to drop a card on, repeated a dozen times. The rule that makes it matter is that a buried card can never be dug out, so the aim is to avoid covering a low card with a high one of the same suit-irrelevant rank you will need sooner. Try to keep the four piles roughly sorted by how soon you expect to need their contents. Since suit is ignored, only rank matters, which makes it easier to reason about than it looks — and still mostly decided by the deal.