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.
Goal: build all four foundations from Ace to King by suit.
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.
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.
No. They start completely empty and build up in suit from the Ace, so finding the Aces is part of the game. That is different from Acme, which lifts all four Aces out before the deal.
The first and third rows dealt, which end up as the bottom card and the third card of every column. Each column shows two cards and hides two, fourteen hidden cards in total.
No, and that is the rule that most changes how the game plays. In Canfield proper the reserve claims a space before you can use it; in Minerva a cleared column stays open and is yours to keep.
Only a King, or a run headed by a King. Since the reserve will not fill the space for you, clearing a column is worth real effort — but only if you have a King you can actually reach.
No. The wrap exists in this family only because a turned base card can start a foundation at any rank. Minerva turns no base card, so its foundations run plainly from Ace to King.
Only thirteen cards, turned one at a time, with a single redeal. Almost everything you play comes from the twenty-eight cards on the board and the eleven in the reserve instead.