Crescent Solitaire 🌙🃏 – A Classic Card Game

Welcome to Crescent Solitaire – a friendly two-deck patience (solitaire) card game that’s easy to learn and fun to play! In this game, 104 cards are dealt into a big half-moon (“crescent”) of 16 piles, making for a unique and inviting layout. It’s sometimes called La Demi-Lune (French for “half-moon”). With its gentle challenge and familiar Klondike-like rules, Crescent Solitaire is perfect for casual gaming and a relaxing break 🃏😊. Whether you’re on a desktop or a smartphone, you can deal the cards and start building sequences with just a tap or click!

How to Play 🎴

There are 8 foundation piles (4 start with an Ace, 4 with a King) in the center, and 16 tableau piles of 6 cards each forming the crescent.* In Crescent Solitaire, the cards start in a large semicircle around the foundations. First, remove one King and one Ace of each suit to serve as the foundation bases. Place the four Kings in a row (for piles built down to Aces) and the four Aces below them (for piles built up to Kings). Then deal the remaining 96 cards into 16 piles of 6 cards each, fanning them out around the foundations. Turn up the top card of each tableau pile; these are the only cards you can play.

1. Build the foundations. Your goal is to move all cards to the eight foundation piles by suit. Four foundations start with Kings (and are built downward to Aces) and four start with Aces (built upward to Kings). Always build by suit – for example, put ♥️Q on ♥️K in a King foundation, or 3♦ on 2♦ in an Ace foundation. You can only move one card at a time, and only the top card of each tableau pile is available.
2. Play within the tableau. You may also move cards between tableau piles to uncover more cards. In each tableau pile, you can build up or down by suit (and wrap around: a King can go on an Ace or an Ace on a King). For example, you could move 🂣 (3♣) onto 🂢 (2♣), or 🂠 (Ace♣) onto 🂮 (King♣). Note: You cannot move groups of cards together or fill empty piles – only single cards move.
3. Use shuffles smartly. If no moves are available, click Shuffle (or Redeal). This will take the bottom card of each tableau pile and move it to the top of that pile, giving you new plays. You can shuffle up to 3 times per game. Use each reshuffle wisely to unblock key cards.
4. Win the game! Keep transferring cards to the foundations. Aces-build-up piles and Kings-build-down piles must each be completed by suit. When all 104 cards have been moved onto the foundations in order (Ace-through-King and King-through-Ace), you clear the tableau and win 🙌🎉.

Follow these steps and enjoy the satisfying puzzle: as SolitaireParadise explains, you “move all the cards from the tableau to the foundations,” building the piles by suit. The rules are simple, but arranging two decks of cards in this crescent layout makes the strategy fun and challenging.

A Brief History 📜

Crescent Solitaire doesn’t have a single famous inventor; instead, it’s a classic patience game that dates back many decades. It appears in traditional solitaire collections, such as an 1860s French compendium by the Comtesse de Blanccoeur, who included patience layouts like this one. It was later documented by American authors Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith in their famous 1949 guide, The Complete Book of Solitaire & Patience Games. Solitaire expert David Parlett also featured Crescent in The Penguin Book of Patience (1979). Over time, Crescent (aka La Demi-Lune or sometimes “Refuge Solitaire”) has become a beloved two-deck solitaire variant among casual gamers. In other words, when it was “invented” isn’t certain – it likely evolved in the late 19th or early 20th century – but its longevity means that players enjoy it as a timeless classic card game.

Play Anywhere 🌐📱

One great thing about Crescent Solitaire is that it’s built for modern devices and browsers. The game can be played right in a web browser without any download. It works on Windows, macOS, Linux – and on iPhones, Android phones, tablets – basically any computer or mobile device you have. In fact, SolitaireParadise notes “Crescent Solitaire can be played in all modern browsers, on all device types (desktop, tablet, mobile)…”. That means you can grab your phone or tablet and enjoy mobile solitaire fun wherever you go. You can try play it here solitairex.io/crescent-solitaire

Sources: Crescent Solitaire is well-documented in solitaire literature, and its rules and compatibility are confirmed by game guides and app descriptions. Enjoy playing this relaxing card game!