Play Clock solitaire
Thirteen piles of four: twelve around a clock face and one in the middle. Tap to turn a card, then tap the hour it belongs to. Get every card face up before the fourth King appears.
Deal 0 moves 0:00
Challenge a friend to this exact deal. Win it first and the link carries your moves and time.
Game options
How to play on this page
- Tap anywhere on the clock to turn the next card. The first one comes from the center pile.
- The card lifts above the clock. Tap the pile at its hour: Ace is 1 o'clock, 2 to 10 match their numbers, Jack is 11, Queen is 12, and a King goes to the center. A wrong pile gets a gentle "that card goes to..." message, so it works as a counting game for children.
- The card slides under that pile, face up, and the next card comes from the same pile. Keep going.
- You win if every card is face up. You lose if the fourth King turns up first.
Prefer to watch? Choose "Place them for me" under Game options: each tap then turns a card and places it in one go.
Why the deal decides everything
Every card has one fixed place, so there is never a choice to make. The game ends when the fourth King goes to the center, because the center pile then has nothing left to turn. Whether that happens with cards still face down was settled by the shuffle. Wolfram MathWorld gives the chance of getting every card out as exactly 1 in 13. We checked this page's dealer against that figure: across deals 1 to 26,000, 1,976 came out, or 7.6%, against 7.7% expected.
Because each deal number always gives the same cards, a share link is a fair way to settle who is luckier: send a friend the deal you won and see if theirs comes out too.
Clock rules for a real deck, with a layout sketch, are in the Clock section of our solitaire rules.
Clock solitaire questions
Is there any skill in Clock?
None. Once the cards are dealt the result is fixed; every card has exactly one place to go. That is why it suits children learning to tell the time, and why the "Place them for me" option can play a whole deal by itself.
How often does Clock come out?
Exactly 1 deal in 13, about 7.7%, as Wolfram MathWorld records. In our own check, playing deals 1 to 26,000 on this page with the same engine, 1,976 came out: 7.6%.
Why do Kings go in the middle?
Twelve piles stand for the hours, Ace for 1 o'clock through Queen for 12. The King has no hour, so it goes under the center pile, and the fourth King to turn up ends the game.