Play Minerva Solitaire — Klondike's Board, Canfield's Reserve

Minerva is the member of the Canfield family that looks least like the family. Seven columns are dealt four cards each, in alternating rows — face down, face up, face down, face up — so every column hides two cards between the two it shows. Beside them sits a reserve of eleven, spent one card at a time. The foundations start empty at the Aces, nothing wraps, only a King may enter an empty column, and the reserve does not rush in to fill spaces. Take the reserve away and this is a Klondike variant; take the hidden rows away and it is a Canfield one. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Minerva?

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

Setup

• Deck: one standard 52-card deck.
• Tableau: seven columns of four cards (28 in all), dealt as four rows — face down, face up, face down, face up. Fourteen cards start hidden.
• Reserve: eleven cards, of which only the top one is in play.
• Foundations: four, empty. The Aces are yours to find.
• Stock: the remaining 13 cards, turned one at a time to a waste, with one redeal.

Rules

• Build tableau columns down in alternating colours: a red 7 goes on a black 8.
• A packed run travels as a unit.
• Only a King, or a King-headed run, may enter an empty column — and the reserve does not fill it for you.
• A hidden card turns up the moment play exposes it.
• Foundations build up by suit from the Ace and are one-way. Nothing wraps.
• One card off the stock at a time, and exactly one redeal.

Minerva Strategy

Thirteen stock cards is almost nothing. Nearly everything you will ever play comes from the twenty-eight on the board and the eleven in the reserve, so the game is decided by how you order them.

• The reserve is a queue, not a store. Eleven cards come off one at a time and you cannot look past the top one. Every time you can legally play the reserve card, ask whether you would rather see the next — because that is the only way to find out what it is.
• Count in twos, because the rows alternate. Under every visible card sits a hidden one, and under that another visible one. Removing a top card always reveals a surprise; removing that surprise reveals something you could already see. Plan two layers at a time.
• An empty column here is genuinely yours. This is the rule that separates Minerva from the rest of the family: the reserve will not claim your space. So a cleared column is a real, permanent asset — but only a King can use it, so clear the column whose King you can actually reach.
• Find the Aces early. Nothing banks until an Ace surfaces, and all four start buried or in the reserve. With only thirteen stock cards you cannot count on the deal to hand them to you.
• Do not bank the low cards too eagerly. Foundations are one-way and nothing wraps here, so a 3 sent up is gone. Left in play it hosts a 2 of the opposite colour, which on a board this tight is often worth more than a foundation card.

Minerva in the Canfield Family

Minerva is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as a Canfield variant, and it is catalogued there for the reserve rather than for anything else. Its class overrides the family's deal completely: instead of turning a base card and dealing four single columns, it lays out seven columns in alternating face-down and face-up rows, then counts eleven cards into the reserve.

That override has a consequence worth stating precisely, because it is easy to get wrong. Because Minerva never deals a base card, its foundations keep the ordinary Ace base they inherit — they start empty, and the player finds the Aces. That is different from a game like Acme, which fixes its base at the Ace by lifting all four out before the deal. The two look identical written down and produce different boards: one leaves four Aces in play and thirteen cards in the stock, the other pre-founds them and leaves nine.

The other departure is the one that shapes how it plays. Canfield's signature is that an emptied column is refilled from the reserve before you can use it, so a space is never a resource. Minerva switches that off. Combined with the King-only rule it inherits from its Klondike-style tableau, that turns the empty column back into the thing it is in most solitaires: something you work towards and then guard.

Its interleaved hidden rows are unusual. Every other member of this family deals its columns fully open. In this catalogue only Athena and Interchange alternate hidden and visible cards the same way, and both are in different families — which is why the shared engine's key for saying so is now used by three of them.

For the family's own rule, with a turned base card and a reserve that fills your spaces, play Canfield or Eagle Wing. For the Klondike board this one borrows, play Klondike.

One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates Minerva balanced, and no published win rate for it that we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. Structurally it is tight: thirteen stock cards, fourteen hidden ones, and a reserve you can only spend forwards.