Solitaire terminology

There are a number of common features in many Patience games or solitaire games as they are called in the US, such as "building down" and the "foundations" and "tableau", used to simplify the description of new games.

The layout describes the piles of cards in use during the game, and the restrictions on these piles. There are a number of different kinds of piles which have become standard across a number of games.

Building (or Packing) involves cards being placed in stacks or cascades according to various rules. The "Building" terms are usually combined in game explanations. For instance, a game may describe "building up in sequence by suit". The terms in this table are generally preceded by the word "building" (as in the previous sentence).

The terms above are useful for describing the rules of the game. The terms in this section tend to be more useful for describing things happening during the state of play. Most are derived from Lady Cadogan (see below).

Here are a few additional terms used by Peter Arnold in his book Card Games for One (ISBN ) and may be terms exclusively used in British English in explaining solitaire games.

Terms from the book Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Patience. This defines the forgotten term Talon (alias Stock), which is still in use in Germany. Also note the term Marriage of cards.

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