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Spanish Solitaire: Klondike on a Spanish deck

By Gleb Tkatchouk · last updated 2026-09-18

Spanish Solitaire is what Klondike becomes when you take away the French deck. The Spanish *baraja* has forty cards in four suits — coins, cups, swords and clubs — with no eights, nines or queens, and no red and black. The familiar rules survive; the feel of the game does not. With no colours, columns build by rank alone, and with forty cards the whole deal moves faster and hides less.

Spanish Solitaire on a real forty-card deck — oros, copas, espadas, bastos — with three levels and every deal proven winnable. Free on the App Store.

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The Spanish deck

Four suits: oros (coins), copas (cups), espadas (swords), bastos (clubs). Ranks 1 to 7, then the three court cards: sota (10, the knave), caballo (11, the knight) and rey (12, the king). Forty cards in all. The suits have no colour: there is no "red" and "black" in the Spanish deck, and that is the one change that matters most.

Rules of Spanish Solitaire

The layout. Columns are dealt as in Klondike — one card in the first, one more in each following column, the top card face up. The number of columns is the level.

Foundations. Four, built up by suit from the ace (1) to the rey.

Columns. Cards build down in rank. There is no alternation of colours, because there are no colours: a 6 of cups may go on a 7 of any suit. An empty column takes a rey only.

The stock. One card at a time to the waste; five passes.

Winning. All forty cards on the foundations.

The three levels

On Hard, seven columns take twenty-eight of the forty cards and the stock holds just twelve: almost the whole game is on the table from the start, and the passes matter less than the order in which you dig.

Are Spanish Solitaire deals winnable?

Every deal is drawn from a pool that a bot has actually won, with the win replayed by the engine. In the last measurement of 2,000 deals per level the bot won 68% on Easy, 39% on Normal and 14% on Hard — floors, and only the proven deals are dealt. Full tables on Is every solitaire deal winnable?.

Strategy

1. Suit does not constrain the columns — rank does. Without colours, any 5 goes on any 6. The scarce resource is not a matching colour but a free card of the right rank: there are only four of each.
2. Watch the gap. Ranks jump from 7 to 10 (sota). A 7 goes on a sota; nothing sits between them. Players used to the French deck stall here.
3. Turn cards over first. As in any Klondike, hidden cards decide the game — and on Hard there are twenty-one of them out of forty.
4. Reyes into empty columns, with a plan. Only a rey fills an empty column; with four of them and up to seven columns, an empty column is worth keeping until the right rey shows up.
5. Foundations early are cheap here. With only ten ranks per suit, a card sent home is rarely needed back on a column.

Spanish Solitaire in Decks

Three levels chosen on the game card, the Spanish deck drawn as a Spanish deck, a rules page one tap away, undo without penalty, and a history of every round with its deal code. No ads, no account, works offline.

Frequently asked questions

How many cards are in a Spanish deck? Forty: ranks 1–7 and 10–12 in four suits. Some regional decks add eights and nines for forty-eight; Decks uses the forty-card deck.

What are the Spanish suits? Oros (coins), copas (cups), espadas (swords), bastos (clubs).

Is Spanish Solitaire the same as Klondike? The same rules on a different deck. The missing colours and missing ranks change the play more than the rules suggest.

What is a sota? The knave — rank 10 in the Spanish deck — followed by caballo (11) and rey (12).

Spanish Solitaire on a real forty-card deck — oros, copas, espadas, bastos — with three levels and every deal proven winnable. Free on the App Store.

Scan with your phone to install