Corona and Limited are dealt the same way, built the same way, and moved the same way. Twelve columns of three cards, two decks, down by suit, one card at a time, one pass through the stock. There is exactly one difference between them, and it turns the game inside out: in Limited an empty column is your most valuable possession, and in Corona you never get to keep one. The moment a column empties, the waste's top card drops into it. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: build all eight foundations from Ace to King by suit.
Losing the free space sounds like a small tax. It is not: it removes the manoeuvre most Forty Thieves players rely on and replaces it with a timing problem.
Corona is an old two-deck patience listed by Parlett and by Morehead and Mott-Smith, and recorded under the alternative name The Round Dozen in George Hapgood's Solitaire and Patience. The name is the layout: the twelve piles were traditionally dealt in a ring, a crown around the foundations. A ring is a picture rather than a rule, and this catalogue lays the twelve piles in a row as Limited does — the cards behave identically either way.
The forced fill is what the sources agree on and what defines the game. Wikipedia describes Corona as "nearly identical to the variant of Limited, with the exception of an additional restriction that the deck is used to refill empty piles rather than letting the player fill them as desired", and states the mechanism plainly: "the stock is dealt one card at a time, and automatically fills empty spaces in the tableau piles". BVS Solitaire says the same — "Spaces are filled automatically from the waste or stock piles" — and the PySol Fan Club collection implements exactly that, taking the waste's top card and dealing a fresh one when the waste is empty.
That single rule is a genuinely interesting piece of design, because it removes a resource rather than adding a restriction to a move. Everything else about Corona is the family's classic line: equal columns face up, eight foundations up in suit, single-card moves, one pass through the stock. Its twin, Limited, is the control experiment — the same board with the space handed back — and playing the two in turn is the fastest way to understand what a free column is actually worth.
The same compulsion appears on a much smaller board in Fortune's Favor, a one-deck game whose Aces start on the foundations. For the family's classic ten-column deal, play Forty Thieves; for twelve columns of a single card each, Busy Aces.
One honest note on difficulty. BVS calls Corona difficult to win, Wikipedia calls it relatively long and difficult, and PySolFC rates it balanced. No published win rate for it carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. What is structural is that the game gives you sixty-eight cards through a one-way stock and no free space to work with, which is a demanding combination.
By one rule only. The deal, the build, the single-card moves and the single stock pass are identical. In Limited an empty column is yours to fill as you like; in Corona the waste claims it the instant it opens.
Because the fill is automatic and immediate. All the sources state it as a compulsion rather than a choice, so a space never survives long enough for you to use it while cards remain to fill it.
Yes, at the very end. When both the stock and the waste are exhausted the automatic fill can no longer fire, and from that point an empty column accepts any card just as it would in Limited.
Because of the layout. The twelve piles were traditionally dealt as a ring around the foundations, which is what both names describe. George Hapgood's Solitaire and Patience records the alternative name.
No. Only the top card of a column moves, one card per move, even when the cards under it already run down in suit. Every relocation has to be done a card at a time.
One. The stock deals a card at a time to the waste and there is no redeal, so any card you cannot place as it goes past is out of the game for good.