Quadrille (patience)

Quadrille, also called Captive Queens, La Française or Partner is a card game of the Patience or Solitaire type using a pack of 52 playing cards. The name Quadrille is derived from the layout of the four Queens around which the cards are built. The alternative name, Captive Queens, describes the way the Queens become "enclosed" as the foundations are built upon.

A game of Quadrille at its earlier stages, if the fives, sixes, and queens are dealt first.

Alluding to the name, Quadrille, Parlett describes it as "a pleasant little pictorial which may be said to represent the dance of the cardboard court."[1] The wagon-wheel tableau looks like a quadrille dance from 18th-19th century Europe.[2]

Rules

Layout

There are two variants for setting up the game's layout:

  • The Queens are laid in the middle of the table and the Fives and Sixes laid down in a radial pattern around them as shown to form the foundations.[1]
  • The Queens, Fives and Sixes are shuffled as part of the deck and laid out as they appear, in no set order.

Either way, the role of the Queens is purely decorative and plays no functional role in the game. The aim is to build the Sixes upwards in the same suit as far as the Jacks, and the Fives downwards as far as the Kings (via the Aces). The following chart clarifies which cards are placed on the foundations:[1]

5 4 3 2 A K
6 7 8 9 10 J

Gameplay

To play, cards are turned from the stock and built if possible or discarded if not possible into a wastepile, face up. Once the stock runs out, the cards are gathered from the wastepile and become the new stock from which cards are to be dealt. Three redeals are permitted.[1]

The desired layout at the end of the game.

The game is won when all the cards are in the foundations with the court cards (Kings and Jacks) at the top of each foundation, as shown on the right.

Variations

Contradance (Cotillion) works in the same way as Quadrille, but uses two decks.

Other two-deck games in this family, but with a greater degree of decision making, include Sixes and Sevens, Odd and Even, Patriarchs, and Royal Cotillion.

References
  1. Parlett 1979, pp. 38/39.
  2. "Quadrille" (p.73) in The Little Book of Solitaire, Running Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7624-1381-6

Bibliography
  • Parlett, David (1979). The Penguin Book of Patience. Penguin, London. ISBN 0 7139 1193 X

See also
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