Clock Solitaire
Clock Solitaire Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Setup
One deck of cards (minus jokers) is used. The deck is shuffled and twelve piles of four cards each are laid out, face down, in a circle. The remaining four cards are placed, also face down, in a pile in the center of the circle.
The twelve positions around the circle represent the 12-hour clock and the pile in the middle represents the hands.
Play
Play starts by turning over the top card of the central pile.
When a card is revealed, it is placed face up under the pile at the corresponding hour (i.e., Ace = 1 o'clock, 2 = 2 o'clock, etc. The Jack is 11 o'clock and the Queen is 12 o'clock) and the top card of the pile of that hour is turned over. If a King is revealed, it is placed face up under the central pile.
Play continues in this fashion and the game is won if all the cards (including four Kings) are revealed; turning up the fourth king means you will have completed the clock and won the game. The game is lost if the fourth King is turned up while any cards remain face down.
Variations
In a variation of Clock commonly called Watch, players can continue the play when the fourth king appears, by replacing it with a still face-down card. The game ends when that fourth king reappears.
Notes on the Source Descriptions
The BoardGameGeek item description for Clock Solitaire (BGG 241755) gives the same mechanic with different layout wording. Those differences are recorded here rather than reconciled:
- Layout: the BoardGameGeek description says the cards are dealt face down into 13 piles, twelve in a circle around a 13th pile in the middle, numbered 1 to 12 like a clock face with pile 13 in the middle. The Wikipedia text above describes twelve piles of four cards plus a central pile of four cards.
- Kings: the BoardGameGeek description says a King is played under pile 13 (the middle pile). The Wikipedia text says a King is placed under the central pile. Both describe the same destination.
- Empty piles: the BoardGameGeek description says that when a pile has no face-down card left, play continues with the next face-down card in clockwise order. The Wikipedia text does not address an emptied pile.
- Win and loss: the BoardGameGeek description phrases the goal as completing all other four-of-a-kind piles before the fourth King is revealed, and as a loss when the fourth King is revealed before all other cards are played face up. This matches the Wikipedia win and loss conditions above.