Simple Simon - Cards

There is nothing to turn over. The deal puts all fifty-two cards face-up across ten columns and then stops. No stock, no waste, no reserve cells, nothing held back for later. Whatever is on the table when you sit down is everything you will ever get.

That single design choice changes what the game asks of you. Nobody is dealt a bad break and nobody is rescued by a lucky flip. A deal you fail is a deal you could have read further ahead, which is either the appeal or the frustration, depending on the evening.

The movement rules are deliberately lopsided. One card at a time may go onto any card of the immediately higher rank, suit disregarded, so an eight of hearts is welcome on a nine of spades. But the moment you want to move two cards or more together, they must share a suit and run in unbroken descending order. The loose, convenient placements you make early are therefore exactly the ones that weld a column shut later.

Complete a run from King down to Ace in a single suit and those thirteen cards leave the table on their own. Do it four times and the deal is solved.

Two things worth knowing before your first move:
- The columns are dealt unevenly, eight, eight and eight, then seven, six, five, four, three, two and one, so the short columns at the end are where an empty space realistically comes from.
- An empty column takes any card or any legal group, and it is the only manoeuvring room in the entire game. Getting one, then not wasting it, is most of the skill.

Roughly one deal in five comes out, so losing is normal. Undo reaches back a hundred moves, and stepping a losing line backwards is genuinely how the game teaches itself.

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