Clock rules

Setup & the deal

The full deck is dealt into thirteen face-down piles of four. Twelve piles form a circle like the numbers on a clock face; the thirteenth sits in the middle. Every pile has a home rank: Ace belongs at one o’clock, 2 at two o’clock, and so on up to Queen at twelve o’clock — with Kings in the centre. Jacks and Queens are simply hours eleven and twelve.

The game opens automatically: the top card of the centre (King) pile is flipped face up. That card is now in hand, and the chain begins. From that first flip the flips counter reads 1 — one card of 52 revealed.

Suits play no part in the deal or the play; only ranks matter, and every pile will eventually collect exactly the four cards of its rank, tucked face up beneath it as the game progresses.

How to play

Every turn is the same forced move. Take the card in hand, tuck it face up under the pile matching its rank — a 7 goes under the seven o’clock pile, a Queen under twelve, a King under the centre — then flip the top face-down card of that same pile. The flipped card becomes the new card in hand, and the chain continues.

• One chain, no branches — the card you just placed always dictates where the next flip comes from. There is never a choice.
• Every flip reveals exactly one new card — the flips counter is also a count of cards revealed.
• Kings feed the centre — each King placed in the middle is followed by a flip from the centre pile, until there is nothing left there to flip.
• Auto-play — since no decision ever arises, you can click through the chain yourself for the suspense or let auto-play run the whole fate at once.

A short example: the opening flip from the centre shows a 4. It tucks under four o’clock, and the top card there — say a Jack — is flipped. The Jack tucks under eleven, revealing a Queen; the Queen tucks under twelve, revealing an Ace; the Ace tucks under one o’clock… and so it runs, hour to hour, until a King sends the chain back to the middle. Three of those returns are survivable. The fourth is the end.

Winning & losing

The chain always ends the same way: with the fourth King. The centre pile gave up one card to open the game, so after the fourth King is tucked there, no face-down card remains in the middle to flip — the chain has nowhere to go.

You win if, at that moment, every one of the 52 cards has been revealed — the fourth King was the very last card of the game. You lose if any pile still holds face-down cards when the fourth King lands; those cards stay hidden forever. Nothing else can end the game: no other pile can ever run dry mid-chain, because each of the twelve hour piles surrenders one card per card tucked under it and holds exactly four of each.

The 1-in-13 figure is exact, not an estimate. The chain traces the deal as a mathematical cycle: you win precisely when the shuffle links all 52 positions into one single cycle, and for a uniformly shuffled deck that happens with probability exactly 1/13. Expect long losing runs — thirteen straight losses is entirely ordinary — and treat each completed clock as the small miracle it statistically is.

Edge cases & fine print

• The outcome is fixed at the shuffle. Every flip is forced, so the result was decided before your first click — Clock is a reveal, not a contest. That is also why there is no undo and no hint: there is nothing to undo or hint at.
• The chain cannot stall early anywhere but the centre. An hour pile is asked for its fourth card only when the fourth card of its rank is tucked under it — and it always still holds exactly that one card. Only the King pile, short one card since the opening flip, can run out.
• Seeing three Kings early is not a loss — but it removes all slack. The game continues normally; only the fourth King ends it.
• The flips counter doubles as a progress bar: flips = cards revealed, out of 52. On a loss, the game reports how many cards were still hidden.
• Saved games are validated. A resumed game is checked for exactly 52 unique cards across the piles and the card in hand; a corrupted save is discarded rather than trusted.
• Games are short by design. A won game is exactly 52 flips; a lost one is however far the chain reached before the fourth King. Either way it is over in under a minute — Clock is built for one-more-deal sessions.

Variants

We play the standard game, which also goes by Clock Patience, Travellers, Sundial, Four of a Kind and Hidden Cards in traditional collections. Because the game has no decisions, its variants mostly tinker with the fatalism:

• Watch — the traditional reprieve variant: when the fourth King would end the game early, you may exchange it once for a still-hidden card and keep the chain alive.
• Fortune-telling readings — Clock has a long sideline as a divination ritual: a completed clock is read as a good omen. The mechanics are identical.
• Face-up finales — some house rules deal the last card of each pile face up, adding foresight but no actual agency.

None of these change the fundamental character: Clock is the purest luck game in the solitaire canon, and its charm is exactly that.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• War rules — flip, battle and win all 52 cards
• Pyramid rules — pair cards to 13 and clear the pyramid
• TriPeaks rules — chain up-or-down streaks over three peaks
• Kings in the Corners rules — seat the royals, pair the rest to ten