Yukon Solitaire deals every card face-up with no stock pile, and lets you lift any face-up card together with whatever is stacked on top of it — even if that pile is a jumble of colours and ranks. That single twist turns a familiar layout into a wide-open puzzle of pure information: nothing is hidden but the way forward. It is a bold change of pace from Dragon (Klondike), demanding more foresight and rewarding it handsomely.
How to play Yukon Solitaire
Yukon uses one 52-card deck spread across seven columns, dealt much like Klondike but with a crucial difference: after the initial staggered deal, extra cards are added so that the first column holds one card and the others hold progressively more, and every card is face-up. There is no stock and no waste — the whole deck is on the table from the first move.
You still build the tableau down in alternating colours and send suits up to four foundations from Ace to King. The Yukon twist is movement: you may pick up any face-up card along with all the cards resting on it, regardless of whether they form a proper sequence, and drop the group onto a card that legally accepts the bottom card of what you carry. Only the base card needs to fit. Empty columns take a King or a King-led group. With no stock to fall back on, Undo and Hint are your safety net.
Yukon Solitaire strategy & tips
Because every card is visible, Yukon is a game of planning rather than luck — and the group-move rule is your scalpel. Use it to shuffle disorderly piles onto a single column so you can dig out the buried card you actually need, then re-sort. Since there is no stock to bail you out, think two or three moves ahead before committing; a hasty foundation play can strand a colour you needed as a landing spot.
Target the columns holding low cards you want early, and clear a column when you can — an empty space plus the group-move rule lets you relocate almost any tangle of cards. Do not fill the foundations too eagerly; keeping mid-rank cards on the tableau preserves the alternating-colour landings that make big moves possible. Nearly every Yukon deal is winnable with patient play, so a loss usually means a move order to rethink — undo and try a different line. If you enjoy the open board but want a heftier haul, the two-deck Spider scratches a similar itch.
Yukon vs. Klondike
On paper Yukon and Klondike look like cousins — same seven columns, same alternating-colour builds, same Ace-to-King foundations. The differences are what make Yukon special. There is no stock to draw from, so you are never waiting on the luck of the deal; and the group-move rule lets you carry out-of-sequence cards, which Klondike forbids.
The practical effect is a game with far more agency. In Dragon Solitaire a bad shuffle can simply lock you out, but in Yukon the whole deck is exposed and movable, so the puzzle is almost always solvable if you find the right sequence. That makes Yukon a favourite of players who want to feel that a win was earned by thinking rather than granted by the deal. Master it and you will read any tableau faster — including your next round of Klondike.