Crescent Solitaire

Play Crescent solitaire free online — no download, no sign-up, works on any device. Two full decks fan out in a crescent of sixteen piles around eight foundations that build toward each other: Aces climb up, Kings climb down, and the suits meet somewhere in the middle. You get exactly three shuffles to save a stuck position — and because we run a real search solver on every deal, this page can tell you something no other Crescent site does: across 1,000 random deals, the solver proved wins on 5.8% with no shuffles and 45% with all three. Your shuffles are worth more than you think.

How Crescent works

One Ace and one King of every suit are set out as foundation bases before the deal; the remaining 96 cards form sixteen fans of six, all face up. Ace foundations build up in suit toward King, King foundations build down toward Ace. On the fans you move exactly one top card at a time, onto the top of another fan that is one rank away in the same suit — up or down, and the corner turns: a King sits on an Ace, an Ace on a King. Two rules give the game its teeth. An empty fan can never be refilled — spend a fan, and that seat is gone. And when nothing moves, the shuffle button lifts the bottom card of every fan to its top simultaneously — three times per game, no more.

How a Crescent game begins — a real deal (#3, the same one you can play below). Sixteen fans of six face-up cards curve around the middle in two arcs of eight — the crescent that names the game — with only each fan’s top card exposed. Between the arcs sit the eight foundations: four Aces building up in suit, four Kings building down, until each suit meets somewhere in the middle. The face-down card between them is the shuffle — three uses per game.

✓ Legal Up or down in suit — the 6♥ and the 8♥ both build on the 7♥

✓ Legal The corner turns — a K♣ builds on an A♣, and an A♣ on a K♣

✗ Not allowed An emptied fan never refills — no card may take the empty seat

What are three shuffles actually worth?

Every Crescent site hands you three shuffles; none of them tells you what the shuffles are worth. We measured it. Our search solver took 1,000 random deals and hunted for winning lines four separate times per deal — allowed zero shuffles, then one, then two, then three — with the identical search budget each time, so the only thing that changes between rows is the shuffle allowance. The floors climb steeply: 5.8% proven winnable with zero shuffles, 13.0% with one, 26.9% with two, 45.0% with three — the full allowance multiplies your proven chances nearly eightfold. Two details belong in the fine print. These are floors, not totals: each search ran a two-million-position budget and left 925, 870, 731 and 550 deals respectively undecided — those could fall either way, so the floors are what we can prove and the true shares are anywhere from there up. And the shuffle is sometimes literally everything: 17 of the 1,000 deals were proven unwinnable without one — while with even a single shuffle allowed, not one deal in the thousand could be proven dead. The average best line at three shuffles banked 102.2 of 104 cards; most lost Crescent games die two cards from home. Deals here are honestly random — no pre-filtered pool — and the full table sits beside every other game we measure on our win-rates page.

Feel the opening rhythm on this real deal: the first six moves can all be banks. Send five cards home — the counter starts at eight because the Ace and King bases are dealt before you ever move.

Goal: Bank five cards — the deal starts at 8.

The ruleset, honestly

Crescent has drifted in a century of rulebooks, and sites quietly disagree — so here is exactly what this one plays, and where others differ. The old book rule deals the fans face down with one card showing; every modern implementation deals all 96 face up, and so do we. Classic sources give three shuffles; some modern hosts sell easier tiers of six or nine — we ship the classic three. When a suit’s two foundations meet in the middle, the top card may transfer between them (never the Ace or King bases); one publisher lets whole runs transfer, most move one card, and we side with the majority. And like the modern hosts — though not the old books — we allow a non-base foundation card to return to a legal fan top when you need it back. Every choice is one the game’s history genuinely supports; we just refuse to make them silently.

Strategy: the middle is a negotiation

With two copies of every card, each suit’s up and down foundations are racing toward the same middle ranks — and where they meet decides the game. Bank greedily up one side and you can strand the twin of the very rank you just sealed away. Watch both directions per suit before you send a mid-rank card home, and remember the transfer move exists precisely to renegotiate the boundary when the piles have met. Fans are the other currency: since empties never refill, a fan spent is board space permanently lost — keep cards in circulation by building fan-to-fan, and let the round-the-corner rule cycle a fan through King–Ace to reach a card the direct road cannot. The shuffles are your emergency brake, and everything about them is knowable in advance: all cards are face up, so you can read exactly what every fan’s bottom card is before you spend one.

This deal is the shuffle lesson in miniature. Without a shuffle it stops at 14 banked — not our guess: the solver exhausted every shuffle-free line — and one shuffle breaks it open. Every card is face up, so read the bottom cards of the fans first; you can know exactly what the shuffle will surface before you spend it.

Goal: Bank 16 — impossible until you spend a shuffle.

Five habits that win more Crescent games

Crescent is a game of spent resources — fans, shuffles, and the meeting point in the middle. These habits protect all three.

Check both foundations of a suit before banking a mid rank — the copy you bank is easy, the twin you strand is the game.
Never empty a fan without a reason. An empty fan is dead space forever; even a useless-looking top card is a seat another card can build on.
Read the bottom cards before you shuffle — everything is face up, so a shuffle is never a gamble, it is a move you can calculate.
Hold your shuffles until fan-to-fan traffic is genuinely exhausted; a shuffle spent while moves remained is tempo thrown away.
Use foundation transfers to un-stick the middle: sliding the boundary one rank often frees a bank on the other pile.

Crescent solitaire FAQ

Is every Crescent solitaire deal winnable?

No — and we measured it rather than guessing. With all three shuffles allowed, our solver proved wins on 450 of 1,000 random deals — a 45% floor — and exhausted its two-million-position budget on the other 550 without a verdict either way — so 45% is what we can prove, and the rest is honestly unknown. Without shuffles the picture darkens: 5.8% proven winnable and 17 deals proven impossible. Deals here are honestly random, with no pre-filtered pool.

What does the shuffle actually do?

One shuffle moves the bottom card of every fan to the top of that same fan, all sixteen at once, leaving the rest of each fan in order. It does not re-randomize anything — and since every card is face up, you can work out the entire result before you press the button. You get three per game; undo refunds one if you regret it.

Can I move cards between the foundations?

Yes — when a suit’s up and down piles have built into sequence, the top card may cross between them, which is how you renegotiate where the two piles meet. The Ace and King bases never move. This site also allows pulling a non-base foundation card back onto a legal fan top — a modern-web convention the classic books do not mention; see the ruleset section above.

Why can’t I put a card on an empty fan?

Because the classic rule says spaces are never filled — every source we surveyed agrees on this one. It is Crescent’s sharpest constraint: sixteen fans at the deal is the most board space you will ever have, and part of the strategy is deciding which fans you can afford to spend.

Why is it called Crescent solitaire?

From the table layout: the sixteen fans traditionally curve around the foundations in a half-moon. The arc is cosmetic — some versions draw a rectangle instead — but the name stuck. The game itself is a nineteenth-century two-deck patience built entirely around the meet-in-the-middle foundations.

How do the hints work?

The Hint button runs a real search solver on your actual position — the same standard as our Forty Thieves and FreeCell hints. When it proves a winning line within its search budget, hints follow that line move for move; when it cannot, it points at the strongest continuation it found. It will suggest a shuffle only when it genuinely cannot find a better use of your position.