Daily Solitaire Challenge

How the Daily Challenge works

• Three deals a day: Klondike (draw 1), Spider (1 suit) and FreeCell.
• Same cards for everyone, new at 00:00 UTC. In the US that's the evening before: 8 pm Eastern and 5 pm Pacific during daylight saving time, an hour earlier in winter.
• Every Klondike daily is checked by a solver before it goes out, so it can always be won.
• Your clock starts when you tap Start and keeps running until you finish, even if you leave the page. Restarting the deal doesn't reset it.
• One ranked result per game per day. After that, Practice again lets you replay the deal as often as you like, but practice games aren't ranked.

How the leaderboard ranks you

Results are ranked by time, measured by our server from the moment you start to the moment you finish, not by a clock on your device. If two players finish in the same time, the one with fewer moves ranks higher. The first time you submit, you pick a nickname, and it appears on the board next to a country flag.

The leaderboard also has a This week board, ranked by most wins, and wins of normal games count there. Every Klondike, Spider or FreeCell game you win, at any difficulty, adds one win once the server has verified it. That board resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC.

Fair play: every win is replayed

When you finish, your game goes to our server as the list of moves you made, and the server replays it move by move from the same deal. Only real wins are accepted, and a result that doesn't check out isn't ranked. That stops faked results, but the server can't tell whether a person or a program chose the moves, so the rules are simple: play it yourself, one ranked attempt per person, no solvers and no bots.

Tips for a faster time

• Get settled before you tap Start. The clock won't wait for you.
• Spend the first few seconds reading the layout. A short plan beats a long string of undos.
• Tap cards instead of dragging them. A tapped card jumps straight to the best legal spot.
• Leave auto-move on so safe cards go to the foundations by themselves, and hit Finish the moment the game is decided.
• Moves only break ties, so never trade seconds for a lower move count.
• On a computer, learn the keyboard shortcuts.
• In FreeCell, count your free cells and empty columns before a long move, so you don't waste time on a run that's too big to move.