Play Travellers Solitaire Online for Free (Travellers Patience)
Travellers Solitaire is the straight-row version of the shuttling family. Thirteen face-down piles sit in front of you, one reserve feeds the next traveller, and the entire deal either resolves or collapses on its own. If you want the same automatic logic as Clock without the clock-face board, this is the cleaner, older layout.
What makes Travellers Solitaire distinct?
Travellers Solitaire strips the shuttling mechanic down to rows and a reserve. Twelve piles are assigned to Ace through Queen, while the thirteenth pile acts as the reserve and King destination. The result is an automatic game with almost no extra presentation, just the loop of reveal, place, reveal again.
That makes Travellers useful as a comparison anchor for the rest of the family. Clock Solitaire presents the same idea as a dial. Hidden Cards turns Kings into a separate centre pile. Travellers keeps the reserve in plain sight and makes the underlying mechanism easier to follow.
How the reserve loop works
- Deal thirteen piles of four cards each, all face-down. Piles 1 through 12 are Ace through Queen, and pile 13 is the reserve.
- Turn the top reserve card. That card becomes the current traveller.
- Move the traveller under its matching pile. Aces go to pile 1, Twos to pile 2, and so on through Queens at pile 12.
- Flip the top card of the destination pile and send that new traveller to its own home pile.
- Kings return to the reserve. Each time that happens, the reserve gives you the next traveller and the loop continues.
- You win only if the fourth King is the last relevant card revealed. If the fourth King arrives while other piles still hide cards, the deal is over.
Objective and rules at a glance
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Deck | Standard 52 cards |
| Layout | 13 piles of 4 cards, all face-down |
| Named piles | Ace through Queen, plus a reserve pile |
| Starting point | Top card of the reserve pile |
| King rule | Kings go back to the reserve |
| Win condition | All other piles complete before the 4th King ends play |
| Player decisions | None after the deal |
Difficulty and win rate
Travellers Solitaire is extremely hard in practice because it offers zero control. Every result is fixed by the shuffle, and most losing deals end for the same reason: the fourth King closes the reserve before the rest of the layout is sorted.
The estimated win rate is about 1%. That puts Travellers in the same low-probability tier as the harsher shuttling variants. The game is not hard because the rules are complicated. It is hard because it almost never deals you a survivable chain.
What is the difference between Travellers Solitaire and Clock Solitaire?
Clock turns the reserve into a centre pile and wraps the whole deal into a clock-face layout. Travellers keeps the same automatic behaviour in straight rows, which makes the movement feel plainer, faster, and easier to follow from pile to pile.
| Feature | Travellers | Clock |
|---|---|---|
| Layout | 13 piles in straight rows | 12 outer piles plus a centre pile |
| Starting card | Top of the reserve | Top of the centre pile |
| King handling | Kings return to the reserve | Kings return to the centre |
| Visual identity | Minimal row layout | Clock-face presentation |
| Win rate | About 1% | About 7.69% |
Background and print history
Mary Whitmore Jones published Travellers' Patience in 1888, almost two decades after Ednah Cheney introduced the earlier Wandering Card. Historians such as David Parlett group both under the shuttler label, because each move follows the same pattern: place a card, uncover the next one, continue until the chain stops.
Travellers stayed in circulation because its row layout is easy to print, teach, and compare with later variants. Even though it is closely related to Clock, the row layout gives it a noticeably more stripped-down feel.
Why I would pick Travellers Solitaire
I like Travellers because it lets me see the whole loop clearly. The reserve, the target pile, and the next reveal are easy to follow from start to finish.
My one dislike is that it has less personality than Clock. Clock gives the same mechanic a stronger board shape, so the run is easier to remember after it ends.
Other solitaire games I recommend
If you want a neighboring variant, try Clock Solitaire for a stronger central pattern or Hidden Cards for a layout that gets harder to read as the piles build up.