How to Play Carpet Solitaire

A simple game where you manage 20 exposed reserve piles and try to move all cards to the foundations using a single-pass stock. The goal: Move all 52 cards to the foundations, building each suit from Ace to King.

Setup

1. Four foundations start empty (one per suit)
2. Twenty reserve piles are laid out in a grid, each holding one card face up
3. The remaining cards form a stock pile

How to play

• Click the stock to deal cards one at a time to the waste pile
• Matching cards automatically move to the foundations once no other move is available for them; you can configure this in Settings
• Play the top waste card to an empty reserve space to create flexibility for future plays
• When a card leaves a reserve pile, the empty space can hold any card from the waste or another reserve
• Plan your moves carefully—once you run out of stock cards, the game ends

How to win

Objective: Move all 52 cards to the foundations, building each suit from Ace to King.

You win when all four foundations are complete with all 13 cards in each suit. You're stuck when you have no legal moves before the stock runs out.

Tips

• Try to keep reserve spaces empty so you have flexibility in where to play waste cards
• Look ahead at the stock to plan which reserve cards to move
• Empty reserve spaces are valuable—use them strategically to free up cards you need

Play Carpet free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes Carpet 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 Foundations family:

• Corner Suite — This single-deck game starts with nine empty tableau piles instead of dealt cards, giving you an open board to build on as you draw cards from the stock.
• Deuces — Build up matching suit sequences on eight foundation piles from Twos to Aces in this accessible two-deck game.
• Dimes — Start your foundations at Ten instead of the traditional Ace in this two-deck variant.
• Fly — A two-deck variant where the eight Aces are dealt directly to the foundations at the start, and a 13-card reserve pile feeds the tableau.
• Fortune's Favor — An unusually generous game where all four Aces start in the foundations, giving you an immediate boost to clear the wide tableau.