Tri Peaks

Tri Peaks is the friendliest patience game there is. Twenty-eight cards stand in three overlapping peaks, only the ten along the base start face up, and the rule never changes: play any uncovered card that sits one rank above or below the card on the waste. A king follows an ace and an ace follows a king, so the ladder never really ends — it just loops. Take a card off and whatever it was hiding turns over, which is how a careful start can snowball into a run that eats a whole peak.

Runs are the whole game. The first card in a streak is worth a hundred, the second two hundred, the third three, and so on up, so a nine-card chain is worth more than nine separate cards by a mile. Drawing from the stock resets the count — twenty-four cards to spend, and every one you save is points in the bank at the end. Each peak you flatten pays a bonus of its own, and every deal is graded out of three stars, with your best score and a running count of solved deals kept in this browser.

There is a daily deal, seeded from the date, so everyone who sits down today gets the same three peaks and can compare their run. Shuffle a random one whenever you like, or leave the winnable-only switch on: those layouts are grown backwards from a finished game, so a clear is always hiding in there somewhere. Undo costs nothing but your streak, the playable cards glow softly so you never have to hunt, and nothing is ever on a timer — it is a game to relax into. Click, tap, or walk the arrow keys over the peaks and press Enter.