How to Play Ants Solitaire

Move all cards to four foundation piles by building up or down in any suit. Only the top card of each tableau pile is available to play.

Setup

1. Four foundation piles are started with one card each
2. Four tableau piles receive one card each from the remaining deck
3. The stock can be dealt one card to each tableau pile

How to play

• Click the stock to deal one card onto each tableau pile
• Move the top card of any tableau pile to a foundation pile if it continues a sequence (one rank higher or lower than the pile top, any suit)
• Ranks wrap around (King continues onto Ace and vice versa)
• When a card can't be built on any tableau pile, it automatically moves to the appropriate foundation pile—you can change this behavior in Settings if you prefer manual moves
• You get only one pass through the stock, so plan carefully
• An emptied tableau pile stays empty for the rest of the game—it can't be refilled

How to win

Objective: Build all cards onto the four foundation piles, regardless of suit.

You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations. You lose when no more moves are possible and you've exhausted the stock.

Tips

• Plan ahead: with only top cards playable, think about which cards you need to expose
• Use the wrap-around feature strategically—King to Ace moves can open up buried cards
• Avoid blocking low ranks under high ones, since you can't recover them later

Play Ants free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes Ants alongside 300+ other games. It saves every move as you play, so you can close the window and pick the game up later, replay any deal, and take on a new Daily Challenge deal every day. Browse every game in the Game Gallery.

Related games

More games from the Golf family:

• Black Hole — One card (the Ace of Hearts) starts a single wrapping foundation.
• Eliminator — A Golf-style challenge with six foundation piles that build up or down regardless of suit, wrapping from King to Ace.
• Lincoln Greens — Lincoln Greens is a demanding tableau-clearing game using four decks where you build a single foundation pile that wraps around in rank, while carefully managing a large tableau.
• Putt Putt — A single-foundation game where you build up or down by rank, and the run wraps from King back to Ace so you're rarely stuck for long.
• Up and Up — A relaxed solitaire variant where you try to use up the entire stock by building ascending sequences in the tableau.