Accordion (solitaire)

Accordion is a solitaire game using one deck of playing cards. It is so named because it looks like accordion pleats, which have to be ironed out.[1] Alternative names include Idle Year, Tower of Babel, and Methuselah.[2]

Accordion

A Patience game
Family	Non-Builder
Deck	Single 52-card
See also Glossary of solitaire

The object is to compress the entire deck into one pile like an accordion.[3][4]

Rules

The cards from the entire deck are spread out in a single line.

A pile can be moved on top of another pile immediately to its left or moved three piles to its left if the top cards of each pile have the same suit or rank.[5] Gaps left behind are filled by moving piles to the left. You aren't required to make a particular move if you prefer not to.[6]

Here's an example:

5♠

6♠

10♦

5♥

K♣

According to this example, either 6♠ or 5♥ can be placed over 5♠. These are the only allowable moves.

The game is won when all cards are compressed into one pile.

Variants

Alternate Dealing Method: While laying out the entire deck allows for some tactics to be applied, it can prove to be cumbersome when played with a real deck. An alternative way of dealing the cards is to lay them out one by one, and put them immediately into if possible. The number of cards to be laid out range from just one card to how many cards the width of the table can allow (usually a second or third row is constructed in the process). With this alternative dealing method, game-play remains otherwise unchanged. While more practical, it also allows an element of surprise as the player does not know the next card to be dealt until all possible plays are exhausted.

One Handed Solitaire (Bathroom Solitaire) also uses different criteria for discarding, and with 1 in 140 chances of winning.

Royal Marriage is another eliminator solitaire game in the style of Accordion, where the aim is to reduce the entire deck to King and Queen of the same suit, these being placed at the start and end of the layout at the beginning of the game.

Accordion's Revenge is a harder variant to the standard game. After laying out the deck a card is chosen. The goal is still to condense the entire deck into one pile, but the chosen card has to be on top at the end of the game. The game is impossible if the 1st or 2nd card is the chosen card.

Strategy

The odds of winning have been estimated as being around one in a hundred.[7][8] Given how difficult it is to achieve this when cards are dealt one at a time, Alfred Sheinwold suggests in his book 101 Best Family Card Games (ISBN 0-8069-8635-2) that it may be considered a win when there are five piles or fewer at the end of the game.

The best chance of a successful game comes by identifying 4 cards with the same rank that are close and near the end of the layout at the start of the game, and to try to move these four "sweeper" cards together in a group towards the front of the layout, not covering them with other cards until the end of the game.

See also

• Royal Marriage
• List of patience games
• Glossary of patience terms

References

1. "Accordion" (p.13) in The Little Book of Solitaire, Running Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7624-1381-6
2. "Accordion" (p.12) in Little Giant Encyclopedia of Games for One or Two, The Diagram Group, 1998. ISBN 0-8069-0981-1
3. Walter B. Gibson (23 October 2013). Hoyle's Modern Encyclopedia of Card Games: Rules of All the Basic Games and Popular Variations. Crown. pp. 381–. ISBN 978-0-307-48609-7.
4. "Accordion" (p.11) in Card Games by John Cornelius, Parragon, 1998. ISBN 1-86309-571-3
5. "Accordion" (p.7) in Card & Dice Games by N.A.C. Bathe, Robert Frederick Ltd, 2004.ISBN 1-889752-06-1
6. How to Play Accordion, BicycleCards.com
7. "Accordion" (p.309) in Bicycle Official Rules of Card Games by Joli Quentin Kansil (ed.), 1999. ISBN 1-889752-06-1
8. "Accordion" (p.202) in Hoyle's Rules of Games (3rd edition) by Philip D. Morehead (ed.), 2001. ISBN 0-451-20484-0