Heads and Tails is a solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards. It is mostly based on luck.
First, a row of eight cards are dealt; this is the "Heads" row. Then 8 piles of 11 cards are dealt; this is reserve. Below them is another row of eight cards, the "Tails" row.
The object of the game is to free one Ace and one King of each suit and built each of them by suit; the Aces are built up to Kings while the Kings are built down to Aces.
Only the cards on the Heads and Tails rows are available to play on the foundations or on either the Heads or Tails row; the eight piles are used only to fill gaps. The cards on the Heads or Tails rows can be built either up or down by suit; building can change direction, but Aces cannot be built onto Kings and vice versa.
When a gap occurs on either the Heads or the Tails row, it is filled by the top card of the reserve pile immediately below or above it (depending on which row the gap is). But when a gap occurs above or below an empty pile, two different rule sets say the gap is filled with:
- The top card of the pile to the immediate left of the empty pile (Solsuite, BVS Solitaire Collection)
- The top card of any other pile. (Pretty Good Solitaire)
The game is won when all cards are built onto the foundations.
Famous quotes containing the words heads and, heads and/or tails:
“The strategic adversary is fascism ... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
—Michel Foucault (19261984)
“As some heads cannot carry much wine, so it would seem that I cannot bear so much society as you can. I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I dont get enough of it this year, I shall cry all the next.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Panache upon panache, his tails deploy
Upward and outward, in green-vented forms,
His tip a drop of water full of storms.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)