How to Play Yukon Solitaire
Anyone who knows Klondike will recognize most of Yukon at a glance: the 4 foundations, the columns, the same building down in alternating colors. It takes only 2 changes to make it a different game. The stock is gone, so all 52 cards are on the table from the first move, and you can lift a whole pile of cards at once and carry it across even when those cards sit in no order at all. That second freedom is the heart of Yukon, and growing used to it is most of what stands between a Klondike player and a winning Yukon one.
The goal
Yukon is won the way most solitaire is, by filling the 4 foundations. Each belongs to a suit and rises in order from the Ace up to the King, and once all 52 cards have climbed onto them the hand is done. Everything you do in the columns below serves that one end, feeding those foundations in the order each suit demands. It is the same finish line as Klondike, reached down a very different road.
How the table is dealt
All 52 cards go straight onto the table across 7 columns, with nothing kept back. The first column holds a single card, and each column after gets one more than the last, so the seventh runs 11 cards deep. The top 5 cards of every column are face up, along with that lone card in the first, which leaves the cards beneath them turned down for the time being. You begin, then, with most of the pack already in view, 31 cards face up and 21 still to be uncovered. There is no stock and no waste, and for a Klondike player that absence is the first thing to adjust to.
How the cards move
Two kinds of move make up the entire game. The first is building inside the columns, where a card drops onto one of the next rank up in the opposite color, a red nine onto a black ten, a black eight onto a red nine, the same alternating ladder you would climb in Klondike. The second is sending cards to the foundations, one at a time, each suit rising in order from its Ace.
This is where Yukon tears up the script. When you shift cards around the tableau, you are not limited to lifting a tidy run. You can take hold of any face up card on the board, and everything stacked above it travels along, in whatever jumble it happens to be. Only the card you grabbed has to suit the landing spot, dropping onto one a rank higher of the opposite color, exactly as a lone card would. The cards riding on its back can be any tangle of ranks and suits at all. That single rule is what lets you heave a blocking heap aside in one move and get at the cards you are really after.
What sets Yukon apart from Klondike
If you come to this from Klondike, it pays to be clear on the 2 differences, because together they change how the whole game feels.
There is no stock
Klondike hands you fresh cards from a pile in the corner whenever you run dry. Yukon offers nothing of the sort. The entire pack is dealt at the outset, so no new draw is ever coming to rescue you, and a board that looks stuck generally is stuck unless you can find the move already sitting in front of you.
You can move cards in a loose group
Klondike only lets you carry a run that is already in proper sequence. Yukon lets you carry any face up cards as a single block, ordered or not, so long as the bottom one lands correctly. It reads like a small change and it is not. It gives you far more command of the board, letting you swing big groups of cards around to free a buried one in a way Klondike never permits.
The face down cards are the real game
With no stock to fall back on, winning Yukon turns almost entirely on the 21 face down cards. Each is a card you can neither use nor even see until you have cleared away whatever lies on top of it. So a hand becomes a patient dig, lifting cards off the deeper columns to flip the buried ones beneath, until at last the whole table is showing. Players pass around a simple truth about the game: once every card in a Yukon deal is face up, the hand is as good as won, because from that point it is only a question of ordering what you can already see.
How hard is Yukon
Yukon has a reputation as a stern, demanding game, and the missing stock is why. You cannot bide your time and wait for a kind card to arrive, so one thoughtless early move can leave a deal stranded with no road back. The loose group move pulls the other way and gives a careful player a genuine chance, which is why skill carries so much weight here. The deals on this site are certified, each checked to hold a full solution before you ever see it, so a Yukon you lose really did have a solution waiting, and a careful dig would have found it. For the wider question of which shuffles have a solution at all, there is is solitaire winnable.
Winning at Yukon
A few habits separate a cleared Yukon board from a stalled one.
Turn the hidden cards first
Nearly every good move is one that flips a face down card. Until the table is fully open you are working half blind, so prise those buried cards loose ahead of anything else.
Use the loose move to dig
The freedom to lift any pile, sorted or not, is your sharpest tool. Do not hold it back for neat runs. Reach for it to drag a clump off a column you need to open, then untangle the result.
Send the Aces and twos up early
Low cards do no work sitting in a column, so move Aces and twos to their foundations the moment they come free. Higher cards deserve a pause, since you may yet need them to hold another card in the tableau.
Treat an empty column as gold
Clearing one gives you a home for a King and a space to take an awkward pile apart. As in Klondike, only a King may fill it, so think twice before emptying a column with no King on hand, unless the cards it frees are worth it.
Look before you leap
With no stock to save you, a move you cannot undo can sink the whole hand. Follow where a big group move leaves you before you play it, and lean on undo to test a line whenever you are unsure.
Common questions
Does Yukon solitaire have a stock pile?
No, and that is the defining thing about it. The whole pack of 52 is dealt onto the columns at the start, with no pile to draw from later, so you have to win with what is in front of you from the first move.
Can you move any group of cards in Yukon?
Yes. You may lift any face up card together with everything piled on top of it, even if those cards are in no sequence whatsoever. The catch is that the card you picked up has to land on one a rank higher of the opposite color, while the cards above it can be anything at all.
Is Yukon harder than Klondike?
In some ways, yes, mostly because there is no stock to bail you out of a tight spot. Against that, the loose group move gives you more control than Klondike ever does, so a patient player can do well. The deals here are certified solvable, so the one you are on can be cleared.
How many cards start face up in Yukon?
Thirty one. The top 5 cards of each column are turned up, plus the single card in the first column, which leaves 21 cards face down to be uncovered as you dig through the columns.