By Online Solitaire Free Editorial Team · Editorial Standards
The patience family has been accumulating variants for more than two centuries, and the catalogue contains games that are unusual in several meaningfully different ways. Some are unusual in their layout — their starting arrangement of cards is unlike anything else in the family. Some are unusual in their movement rules — the conditions under which cards can be relocated violate the expectations built up by mainstream games. Some are unusual in their win conditions — they do not build four-suit foundations but instead pursue a completely different structural goal. And some are unusual in a more fundamental way: their core design challenge is so different from anything in the mainstream patience tradition that playing them for the first time feels like a different category of game rather than a variant of one already known.
The patience family has been accumulating variants for more than two centuries, and the catalogue contains games that are unusual in several meaningfully different ways. Some are unusual in their layout — their starting arrangement of cards is unlike anything else in the family. Some are unusual in their movement rules — the conditions under which cards can be relocated violate the expectations built up by mainstream games. Some are unusual in their win conditions — they do not build four-suit foundations but instead pursue a completely different structural goal. And some are unusual in a more fundamental way: their core design challenge is so different from anything in the mainstream patience tradition that playing them for the first time feels like a different category of game rather than a variant of one already known.
This article covers the most genuinely unusual solitaire games in the documented patience tradition — weird solitaire variants that stand out not because they are obscure but because their structural mechanics are legitimately strange by the standards of the games most players know. Each of these games is unusual in a specific, describable way. Understanding what makes each one different — not just in rules but in the kind of thinking it requires — is the most productive way to approach an unfamiliar patience game and extract genuine playing value from it.
This article complements our 10 rare solitaire variants guide, which covers games that are unusual primarily in their obscurity. The games here are unusual in their mechanics, regardless of how well known they happen to be.
Solitaire is any card game played by a single player against a shuffled deck, with a defined win condition reached through a legal sequence of moves. The standard win condition in the mainstream patience tradition is building all 52 cards (or 104 in double-deck games) onto foundation piles by suit in ascending rank from Ace to King. The standard mechanics are tableau building (arranging cards in the playing area by rank and colour or suit), stock drawing (cycling through undealt cards one or three at a time), and sequence movement (relocating groups of cards between tableau columns as units). These mechanics are the baseline from which unusual solitaire games depart — some departing slightly, some departing entirely.
Online solitaire platforms are the most accessible way to encounter unusual patience mechanics for the first time, because automatic rule enforcement removes the overhead of learning and applying a new rule set manually. When a game has a rule as counterintuitive as Elevens' pair-removal-to-11 from a face-down grid or Monte Carlo's adjacency-removal from a random array, having the platform enforce legality automatically lets the player focus on planning rather than rule compliance. For the comparison between online and physical play for unusual variants specifically, see our classic vs modern solitaire guide.
Bowling Solitaire — the pin-clearing layout. Bowling Solitaire is one of the most visually distinctive patience games in existence: the opening layout is a ten-pin bowling formation — one card in the back row, two in the next, three in the next, four in the front — all face-up, surrounded by a six-card "lane" at the sides. The goal is to clear all ten "pin" cards by pairing them with cards from the lane and stock that sum to the same rank as the pin, or by matching specific combinations that correspond to bowling scoring concepts (strikes, spares). The bowling metaphor is so fully integrated into the game structure that players are effectively playing a card game that simulates a bowling score — a level of thematic integration unusual in any patience game. Accessible win rates and fast resolution make it genuinely playable rather than just a novelty.
Elevens — the grid removal game. Elevens deals nine cards face-up in a 3×3 grid. The player removes pairs of cards that sum to 11 (Ace+10, 2+9, 3+8, 4+7, 5+6) or removes Jack-Queen-King triplets simultaneously. When a card is removed, the grid space is filled from the stock. The game is won if all 52 cards are cleared. The 3×3 grid and the pair-to-11 mechanic bear almost no structural resemblance to any standard patience game — there is no tableau, no foundation building, no stock cycling in the Klondike sense. Elevens is classified as a patience game purely by convention (one player, one deck, defined win condition). Its strategic challenge is identifying all available pairs before committing to any removal, because some pair removals block subsequent triplet opportunities. Win rates of 50–65% make it one of the more accessible grid-clearing games.
Monte Carlo — the adjacency-clearing array. Monte Carlo deals all 52 cards face-up in a rectangular array (typically five rows of ten, with two cards left over). Pairs of matching rank that are adjacent — horizontally, vertically, or diagonally — are removed together. After each round of removals, remaining cards consolidate into the top of the array, filling gaps, and new cards from the stock fill the remaining spaces. The game is won if all 52 cards are cleared. What makes Monte Carlo unusual is that "adjacent" is the only placement rule — no rank sequences, no suit constraints, no building direction. The planning challenge is recognising which pairs to remove first so that their removal brings non-adjacent matching pairs into adjacency, creating chains of removals that the naive first-available approach misses entirely. Win rates of 45–60% with systematic consolidation planning make Monte Carlo accessible but not trivial.
Idiot's Delight — the suit-escape game. Idiot's Delight (also known as Aces Up) deals four cards face-up in a row. If two or more cards of the same suit are visible, all but the highest-ranking same-suit card are discarded. After each discard round, four more cards are dealt. Empty spaces created by discards can be filled by any card from the tableau. The win condition is reducing the entire deck to four Aces — one per suit — in the four positions. The unusual feature of Idiot's Delight is that the discard rule is mandatory and automatic in the purest version: any lower same-suit card in view must be discarded, without player choice. The player's only real decisions are which cards to move into empty spaces. Yet despite this apparent simplicity, the placement decisions determine whether the endgame produces the four-Ace result or a collection of trapped high cards that cannot be discarded. Win rates of 15–25% make Idiot's Delight genuinely hard despite its simple apparent rule set.
Concentration (Memory Solitaire) — the face-down matching game. Concentration deals all 52 cards face-down in a 4×13 grid (or any rectangular arrangement). The player turns over two cards per turn; if they match in rank, they are removed. If not, both are turned face-down again and the player tries to remember where they are for future turns. The win condition is clearing all 26 pairs. Concentration is the most cognitively unusual patience game: its primary skill is memory rather than planning, suit tracking, or sequence management. The player who remembers the location of a turned-over 7 six moves later has a direct advantage over a player with equivalent reasoning skills but weaker short-term spatial memory. Concentration is unusual in the patience tradition precisely because it tests a cognitive skill that no other patience game prioritises. Win rates in pure memory play approach 100% with a perfect memory; in typical play the rate reflects the player's actual recall ability.
Pyramid with Relaxed Rules — the easiest weird variant. Standard Pyramid removes pairs summing to 13 from a seven-row pyramid structure. Pyramid with Relaxed Rules modifies the stock: instead of one pass through the stock with a fixed number of redeals, the player may cycle through the remaining stock continuously until no moves remain. This single rule change — unlimited stock cycling — raises the win rate from the standard 40–60% to approximately 75–85%, making it one of the highest win-rate single-deck games in the family. What makes it unusual is that the same starting layout and the same pair-removal mechanic produces a radically different playing experience depending purely on whether stock cycling is limited or not. Players accustomed to standard Pyramid find Relaxed Pyramid disorienting in the opposite direction — it wins too easily, making the strategic challenge feel under-powered relative to the time invested.
Clock Solitaire — the purely chance-based game. Clock Solitaire (also known as Clock Patience or Four of a Kind) is the most unusual patience game in a fundamental sense: it has no decision points whatsoever. All 52 cards are dealt face-down into thirteen piles arranged like a clock face — twelve piles at the clock positions and one in the centre. The player turns over the top card of the centre pile, places it face-up at the bottom of the pile corresponding to its rank (Ace=1, 2=2, ..., Queen=12, King=centre), then turns over the top card of that pile and repeats. The game is won if all four Kings are face-up last — which happens approximately 1 in 13 times by pure probability, regardless of any player decision. Clock Solitaire is the clearest demonstration that not all patience games involve skill: it is a purely stochastic process that the player executes but does not influence. Its inclusion in the patience canon is historical rather than strategic.
Yukon — the free-movement sequence builder. Yukon is unusual within the mainstream sequence-building family for a specific rule: any face-up card in the tableau — and all cards above it in its column — can be moved as a group regardless of whether those cards form a valid sequence. A 7 of hearts on top of a King of clubs on top of a 3 of spades can be moved as a unit to any 8, because the 7 is the bottommost card and the movement rule cares only about the bottommost card's rank. This free movement rule is unusual because it inverts the standard patience logic of building valid sequences before moving them: in Yukon, you build valid sequences by moving invalid ones into advantageous positions. The planning challenge is not sequence purity but spatial reorganisation — visualising how a collection of mismatched cards in one column can be repositioned to gradually approach the descending-rank order that allows them to reach the foundation. Win rates of 35–45% with strategic play make Yukon a moderately difficult unusual game that is well worth experiencing as a contrast to Klondike.
Golf Solitaire — the scored patience game. Golf Solitaire is unusual in the mainstream patience tradition for two specific reasons. First, it is typically scored rather than won or lost — cards remaining at the end count as penalty points, creating a cumulative score across multiple games rather than a binary win/loss result. This makes Golf the closest patience game in structure to a sport: players track their score over a round of nine or eighteen "holes" (games) and attempt to minimise cumulative penalty, not simply win any single game. Second, the running chain mechanic — each card played must be adjacent in rank (one higher or lower) to the previous card regardless of suit — produces a different kind of planning than any sequence-building game: the player is looking for chains rather than columns, and the longest available chain at each stock draw is rarely the most obvious one. Perfect rounds (clearing all 35 tableau cards) occur 10–20% of the time with careful chain management.
Accordion — the collapsing row game. Accordion is unusual in the most purely visual sense: the entire game takes place in a single row that grows and collapses as play proceeds. All 52 cards are dealt one at a time into the row. Any card can be moved onto the card immediately to its left, or onto the card three positions to its left, if the two cards share either suit or rank. Each move collapses the row slightly — successful sequences of moves can reduce a twenty-card row to five or six cards. The game is won if the entire row collapses to one card, which is rare but genuinely achievable with careful move ordering. What makes Accordion unusual is that the "board state" changes shape with every move in a way no other patience game replicates: the playing area contracts and sometimes re-expands as cards are placed and moved, and keeping track of which cards are three positions left of which requires spatial attention rather than rank tracking.
Two habits improve play across the weird solitaire variants covered in this article, even though these games have less in common with each other than any group of mainstream patience variants. First: identify the specific mechanism through which the game can get stuck before playing, not during. In Elevens, getting stuck means a board state with no pairs summing to 11 and no J-Q-K triplet — knowing this before the first move makes every removal decision oriented toward avoiding that state. In Idiot's Delight, getting stuck means high cards of the same suit trapped in the four positions without an empty space to resolve the blockage — knowing this makes every space-filling decision oriented toward keeping resolution options open. Second: play the first few games of any unusual variant without score pressure, using undo freely to understand what moves produce which board states. Unusual games are unusual precisely because their mechanics are unfamiliar, and the planning habits that mainstream patience experience has built do not transfer automatically. Undo-based exploration of unfamiliar move consequences is the fastest way to build the game-specific planning model that productive play requires.
Applying mainstream patience habits to games that do not share mainstream mechanics. The instinct to build descending sequences is irrelevant in Elevens, Monte Carlo, and Concentration. The instinct to advance foundations is irrelevant in Accordion, Golf, and Idiot's Delight. Players who enter unusual games with strong mainstream habits and do not consciously set them aside consistently underperform their actual reasoning ability in the new game until the habits are de-prioritised.
Treating Clock Solitaire as a skill game and being frustrated by losses. Clock Solitaire has no decision points. The outcome is determined entirely by the deal. Players who believe they made a mistake in a lost Clock game are mistaken — no alternative sequence of moves was available. Understanding which patience games are purely stochastic and which are skill-determined is a prerequisite for interpreting win rates accurately and setting appropriate expectations.
Not using undo to explore unusual mechanics before committing to a strategy. In mainstream games, the player has accumulated enough experience that the downstream consequences of most moves are roughly predictable. In unusual games, the first several sessions are genuinely exploratory — the player does not yet know what a productive board state looks like or which move categories tend to improve vs. worsen outcomes. Using undo to test move consequences rather than playing to completion is not cheating; it is the most efficient way to build a game-specific mental model for an unfamiliar variant.
The most unusual patience games covered in this article are available at onlinesolitairefree.com. For players coming from the mainstream catalogue who want the most structurally informative first unusual game, two recommendations stand out. Yukon (available at Play Yukon Solitaire) is the most unusual game with the most directly transferable mainstream skills — its free-movement rule changes the planning model significantly while keeping the tableau-building context familiar. Golf (available at Play Golf Solitaire) is the most unusual win condition in wide distribution — scored rather than won/lost, chain rather than sequence, sport-format rather than single-game format — and provides an experience genuinely unlike any of the foundation-building mainstream games while remaining immediately accessible.
Identify the specific mechanism through which the game produces stuck or lost positions before beginning play; use undo freely in the first few sessions to understand the downstream consequences of unfamiliar moves; and explicitly set aside the sequence-building and foundation-advancing habits from mainstream patience games when those mechanics are not present in the variant being played. The most common strategic error in unusual solitaire is pattern-matching to the wrong mainstream game — playing Accordion as if it were Klondike, or Monte Carlo as if it were Pyramid. Each unusual game has a specific structural logic that rewards a specific planning mode, and identifying that mode is more valuable than any transferable general habit.
Among the games covered in this article, Pyramid with Relaxed Rules reaches 75–85% win rate — the highest of any unusual variant listed here — but this is partly an artifact of the relaxed stock rule rather than an inherent property of the game design. Among games with more standard design intentions, Elevens (50–65%) and Monte Carlo (45–60%) offer the most accessible unusual mechanics with win rates comparable to mid-difficulty mainstream games. Clock Solitaire wins approximately 1 in 13 times by pure probability regardless of player decisions — technically one of the lower win rates, but entirely determined by the deal rather than by skill.
No, and the proportion of unwinnable deals varies enormously across the unusual patience games. Clock Solitaire is technically "won" only when the deal happens to place the four Kings last — approximately 7.7% of deals. Concentration approaches 100% solvability because matching pairs always exist and the only constraint is memory. Idiot's Delight (Aces Up) has a 15–25% win rate, most of which reflects genuinely unwinnable deals rather than skill losses — the starting deal determines accessibility far more than player decisions. The general principle holds across unusual and mainstream games alike: games with complete information and flexible staging tend toward higher solvability; games with restricted information, forced moves, or limited stock passes tend toward lower solvability and higher proportions of unavoidable deal losses.