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National Solitaire Day

Hobby · May 22

A day for solitaire, the card game you play alone with one deck, a bit of patience and a growing row of tidy stacks.

National Solitaire Day falls on Saturday, May 22, 2027. That is 207 days away.

Solitaire is a card game for one person. The best known version, Klondike, starts with seven columns of cards dealt face down, each topped by one card turned up. The goal is to build four piles, one per suit, running from ace up to king.

The rules are simple, and the game still asks for small decisions. Which column to open, when to draw from the stock, whether to move a card now or wait. Some deals come out easily. Others stall with one stubborn card buried under a black seven, and there is nothing to do but shuffle and deal again.

Many people first met the game on a computer screen, where the cards fly into place with a click and a win ends in a cascade. Plenty of others learned it at a kitchen table with a worn deck that was missing the occasional jack. Both count. Klondike is only one member of a large family, which also includes FreeCell, Spider and Pyramid, each with its own layout and its own kind of patience.

Marking the day can be as quiet as the game itself. Deal a hand with a real deck, try a variant you have never played, or teach someone the basic layout. In Klondike, turning over face down cards early tends to give you more choices later.

Ways to celebrate

• Deal a game of Klondike with a real deck of cards.
• Try a variant you have never played, like Spider or Pyramid.
• Teach a friend or child how to set up the seven columns.
• Keep a tally of how many games you win in one evening.

Dates

All national days on May 22

Also on May 22

• National Vanilla Pudding Day
• National Craft Distillery Day
• National Italian Beef Day
• National Buy a Musical Instrument Day
• National Maritime Day
• Sherlock Holmes Day

Categories: Hobby days