Can I really put any 7 on any 8?

Yes. The tableau builds down by rank and ignores suit entirely, so the 7 of spades goes on the 8 of spades just as readily as on the 8 of hearts. Only the ranks are checked.

Do the foundations ignore suit too?

No, and that is the whole tension of the game. Foundations build up in suit from the Ace exactly as in FreeCell, so a tidy mixed-suit column in the tableau has to be taken apart before any of it can be banked.

What can go into an empty column?

Only a King, or a run headed by a King. This is the price the game charges for its very loose building rule, and it means an empty column is worth nothing until you have a King you can reach.

How many cards can I move at once?

With four empty cells and no empty column, five. Each empty column doubles that, but the King rule makes empty columns rare — so five is usually your ceiling.

Is KingCell easier than FreeCell?

Easier in the opening and harder at the end. The suit-blind build means you can nearly always move something, but it also lets you build columns that will need long, careful unpicking before the foundations can take them.

How is the board dealt?

Exactly as FreeCell's: eight columns, four of seven cards and four of six, all face up. KingCell changes no part of the deal — only the tableau build rule and the empty-column rule.

KingCell Solitaire - Play Online & 100% Free

Play KingCell Solitaire — Build on Anything, Empty for Nobody

KingCell is FreeCell's exact board — eight columns, four cells, all 52 cards face up — with two rules pulling hard in opposite directions. The tableau builds down by rank and ignores suit completely, so any 7 goes on any 8, including the 7 of the same suit. And an empty column will take nothing but a King. You can nearly always find a legal build; you can nearly never open a column to take advantage of it. That trade is the whole game. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play KingCell?

Goal: build all four foundations from Ace to King by suit.

Setup

Deck: one standard 52-card deck, all face up.
Tableau: eight columns — four of seven cards and four of six.
Free cells: four, all empty at the start. Each holds one card.
Foundations: four, empty.
No stock, no waste, no redeal.

Rules

Build tableau columns down by rank, suit ignored: any 7 goes on any 8, whatever the suits or colours.
A packed run travels as a unit — and here a run is any descending sequence of ranks — as far as your free cells and empty columns allow.
Only a King, or a King-headed run, may enter an empty column.
A free cell holds exactly one card and may return it at any time.
Foundations are unchanged: they build up by suit from the Ace, and are one-way.
You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations.

KingCell Strategy

The loose build is a trap dressed as a gift. Everything moves, almost nothing progresses, and the discipline the rules used to impose has to come from you instead.

Remember what the foundations still want. They take suits, and the tableau does not. A tidy column of nine descending cards in four suits is easy to build and worth nothing — every one of those cards has to come off again in the right order.
Sort towards the suits as you go. When two cards both fit a spot, prefer the one that puts a card nearer the suit it will eventually need. That choice is free at the moment you make it and expensive later.
Count before every big move. Cards that travel together = (free cells + 1) × (empty columns + 1). With four cells and no space that is five, which is generous — but the King rule means the second term is usually stuck at one.
Work towards one specific King space. Because only a King may fill a column, decide early which column you can realistically clear and which King will go into it. Clearing a column with no King available wastes the only lever the game gives you.
Do not spend cells on convenience. With such a loose build there is almost always a tableau move available instead. Save the cells for the moments when there genuinely is not.

KingCell in the FreeCell Family

KingCell is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as an open FreeCell variant, and it is one of the shortest classes in the file: it declares a rank-based tableau stack with a King base rank and nothing else. There is no custom deal at all, so the board is FreeCell's exactly — eight columns, four cells, and the familiar five-rows-plus-two-partial arrangement. The collection also configures its solver with sbb='rank' and esf='kings', which is a second statement of the same two changes.

Suit-blind building is a recurring idea across solitaire and it is almost always paid for somewhere. Here the price is the King rule, and the two together produce a distinctive rhythm: the middle game feels unusually free, and the endgame is a long, careful unpicking of columns you were allowed to build too easily.

The same shape of problem appears elsewhere in this catalogue. Black Widow in the Spider family lets any descending run travel while still requiring single-suit sets to collect; Chinaman loosens Klondike's build to any suit but the card's own and pays with Kings-only spaces. In all three the lesson is the same — a rule that makes moving easy does not make finishing easier.

For the strict original, play FreeCell. For the same King rule with alternating-colour building and only two cells, play Bath; for four cells and Kings-only spaces on a wider board, Seahaven Towers.

One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates KingCell mostly skill, and no published win rate for it that we can find carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. Structurally it should be more forgiving than FreeCell in the opening and less so at the end, because the loose build lets you make mistakes that the foundations will eventually charge you for.