Hard difficulty
La Belle Lucie
The entire deck is dealt into fans of three cards, with up to two redeals allowed to untangle what's left.
Also published as Trefoil, Alexander the Great, Clover Leaves, Midnight Oil, Lovely Lucy, The Fan.
- One-Deck Games
- Four-Suit Games
- Hard Solitaire
- Mobile-Friendly Games
- Luck-Based Games
- Tableau Builders
- Foundation-Building Games
| Decks | One deck |
|---|---|
| Suits | 4 |
| Typical length | 10 min |
| Difficulty | Hard |
| How much skill matters | Medium |
| How much the shuffle matters | High |
| Family | Standalone |
There is no playable version of La Belle Lucie on this site yet — this page covers its rules and strategy. The game suits a touchscreen well, so it is a good candidate once a build exists.
About La Belle Lucie
La Belle Lucie spreads the deck into eighteen small fans of three and lets you touch only the top card of each. Building is strictly by suit, so at any moment most of the table is out of reach, and the game proceeds in short bursts of progress punctuated by dead stops.
What keeps it alive is the redeal: twice, you may sweep up everything still in the tableau, shuffle it, and lay it out again in fans of three. That turns a game which would otherwise be hopeless into a genuinely strategic one, because how much you extract before spending a redeal is the whole question. It travels under a remarkable number of names — Alexander the Great, Clover Leaves, Midnight Oil, Trefoil — which is a fair sign of how long it has been around.
How to play
The deck is dealt into seventeen fans of three cards with one card left over as an eighteenth. Only the top card of each fan can be played. Fans build down by suit — a strict rule that makes most cards immediately unplayable — and the foundations build up by suit from the Aces as they come free. A fan you empty stays empty for good. When you run out of moves you may gather the tableau up, reshuffle it and redeal it into fans of three, and you get to do that twice.
Strategy
With only the top card of each fan available and suit-strict building, most of the layout is inert at any moment, so the game is really about the two redeals. Spend the first pass extracting what you can cheaply and getting Aces and low cards up; do not contort to save a fan. The article notes that some deals are simply unsolvable — a low card sitting beneath a higher one of the same suit in the same fan cannot be freed — so recognising a dead fan early and planning around it is a real skill. Save the redeals rather than triggering them the moment you stall.
What works
- Two redeals give real strategic weight to when you stop and reshuffle
- Fans layout is distinctive and reads clearly on any screen
- Suit-strict building makes each freed card feel earned
What to know
- Only the top card of each fan is available, so most of the table is inert
- Some deals are provably unsolvable regardless of play
- Emptied fans cannot be refilled
Frequently asked questions
- How many decks does La Belle Lucie use?
- La Belle Lucie is played with a single standard deck.
- Is La Belle Lucie good for beginners?
- La Belle Lucie is generally better suited to players who already know the basics of solitaire, as it involves more planning than a typical beginner game.
- Is La Belle Lucie based more on luck or strategy?
- La Belle Lucie is largely determined by how the cards fall — there's limited room for strategy to change the outcome.