Pyramid Solitaire

Twenty-eight cards that sum to thirteen

Pyramid deals twenty-eight cards into a face-up triangle, seven rows deep, and asks you to remove them in pairs whose ranks total thirteen. Number cards count face value, Jacks are eleven, Queens twelve — and Kings, at thirteen exactly, leave the board alone the moment they are exposed.

A card is available once the two cards resting on it are gone, so the pyramid peels from its bottom edge upward. The stock turns cards one at a time for pairing with whatever the pyramid exposes, and you get three passes through it.

• ✓Remove pairs of exposed cards whose ranks total 13.
• ✓Ace = 1, Jack = 11, Queen = 12. A King is 13 and leaves on its own.
• ✓A card is exposed once the two cards below it are gone.
• ✓You get three passes through the stock.

The pairing table, and why it is the whole game

Every rank has exactly one partner, and there are exactly four of each rank in the deck. That gives you a fixed budget: four chances to remove each rank, and no way to manufacture more.

So when you spend a Ten on a convenient Three from the stock, you have used a quarter of the supply for every Ten and every Three still buried in the pyramid. The losing pattern in Pyramid is almost always a partner shortage created ten moves earlier, and this table is the tool for seeing it coming.

Five habits that avoid a dead pyramid

1. 01

   Take exposed Kings immediately

   A King costs nothing to remove, needs no partner, and each one opens the row above it. There is never a reason to leave one sitting.

2. 02

   Exhaust the pyramid before spending a stock turn

   Pyramid pairs are unlimited; stock passes are three. Check every available pair on the structure itself first, because a stock turn spent on a pair you already had is a pass you will want back later.

3. 03

   Prefer the pair that exposes two cards

   Removing two cards side by side in the same row frees the card above them; removing two from opposite ends frees nothing. Depth is what runs you out of options, so buy depth wherever the choice exists.

4. 04

   Count the ranks you have already spent

   If all four Sixes are gone, every Seven left in the pyramid is dead weight — and if one of those Sevens sits low in the structure, the deal is already over. Counting as you go turns that discovery from a surprise into a plan.

5. 05

   Break the wide part of the pyramid first

   When two pairs both work, take the one that damages the lower rows. The bottom of the pyramid is what unlocks everything above it; the apex unlocks nothing.

When a pyramid is lost before you start

Pyramid has a failure mode the other games here do not: two cards can each be the other's only remaining partner, one sitting directly on top of the other. Nothing in the rules can separate them, and no sequence of stock turns helps. That deal was over before the first move, and a player can spend ten minutes discovering it.

It is why Pyramid's natural win rate is among the lowest in patience, and why this table verifies every deal with a solver first. When a board here stalls, some other order of pairs would have cleared it — which makes the arithmetic worth doing rather than a lottery worth abandoning.

Questions about this game

Is every Pyramid deal solvable?

Random Pyramid deals frequently are not — the layout can bury both partners of a pair beneath each other. This site verifies every deal with a solver first, so the boards you are given can always be fully cleared.

What happens when the three stock passes run out?

You play on with whatever pairs the pyramid still offers. If no legal pair remains the deal ends, though the dead-end detector will have flagged it and the rescue offers to rewind to the last winnable point in your history.

Does a King count as a pair?

A King is worth thirteen by itself, so it removes alone with no partner needed. That makes Kings the only free removals in the game and the reason an exposed King should never be left in place.