TriPeaks

TriPeaks takes Golf's one-rank-up-or-down rule and hangs it on a much better-looking layout: three overlapping peaks that collapse card by card as you unpick them. It is the most visually satisfying game in the catalogue, because progress is something you can literally watch happen.

It is also, unusually, a game you should expect to win. Analysis by its creator puts over 90% of deals as fully solvable, which makes it a genuine puzzle rather than a coin flip — if a peak defeats you, the chain existed and you missed it. That combination of quick rounds, visible progress and real solvability is what makes it one of the better games to give someone who is not sure they like solitaire.

Twenty-eight cards form three overlapping peaks with a row of ten along the bottom, and only cards with nothing overlapping them can be played. Move an available card to the waste pile whenever it is one rank higher or lower than the current waste card, suit ignored, and clearing a card may uncover others behind it. When nothing will go, turn a card from the 24-card stock to start a fresh sequence. Clear all three peaks and you have won.

Long chains are what win TriPeaks, so before taking an obvious card, check whether the other option starts a run that keeps going. Work at the peaks rather than the easy cards along the bottom row — the bottom row is always available and the buried peak cards are the ones that will strand you. Spend stock cards deliberately: each one is a restart you cannot get back, and it is worth stopping a chain early if continuing it uncovers nothing. The article notes over 90% of deals are solvable, so a loss here usually means a chain was taken in the wrong order rather than that the deal was hopeless.