Play Spaces and Aces — Fill Fast, Then Close the Holes

Spaces and Aces takes Blue Moon's grid and loosens its fill rule in the opposite direction to Jungle. The suit must still match — but any higher card of that suit will do, not just the next one. So rows fill quickly into ascending runs with holes in them: an Ace, a five, a nine. Closing those holes afterwards, with no redeal to rescue you, is the whole game. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Spaces and Aces?

Goal: make every row read Ace to King in a single suit.

Setup

• Deck: one standard 52-card deck, all face up.
• Grid: four rows of fourteen. Every slot but the leftmost is dealt a card; the four Aces are then moved into those leftmost slots, leaving four gaps.
• Redeals: none at all.

Rules

• A gap is filled by a card of the same suit as the card to its left, of any higher rank — not necessarily the next one.
• A gap in the leftmost column takes an Ace, and nothing else.
• A gap to the right of another gap, or of a King, is dead.
• Moving a card leaves a new gap where it was.
• There is no redeal. The deal you are given is the whole game.
• You win when every row reads Ace to King in one suit.

Spaces and Aces Strategy

The opening is easy and misleading. Play it as if the endgame has already started, because it has.

• Take the smallest jump you can. Putting the nine of hearts next to the ace of hearts is legal and it strands seven cards. Prefer the next rank when it is available; take a jump only when it opens something you need.
• Every jump you make is a hole you must fill later. There is no redeal, so a row of Ace, five, nine is not four cards of progress — it is two holes you have committed to closing.
• Watch where the new gap opens. A fill leaves a hole behind, and one beside a King or another gap is dead for good. On a board with no redeal that is often the losing move.
• Work the low ranks first. The cards nearest each Ace are the ones every later card depends on, and they are the hardest to insert once the row is crowded.
• Read the grid before the first move. Fifty-two visible cards, four gaps, and nothing random after the deal. The plan is available to you from the start.

Spaces and Aces in the Gaps Family

Spaces and Aces is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as a Blue Moon variant. Its class makes two changes: the row stack's accept rule tests left.rank < card.rank rather than left.rank + 1 == card.rank, and the talon deals once and is never gathered again.

Those two changes work together rather than independently. The loose fill makes the opening almost frictionless, which would be a gift on its own; removing the redeal turns it into a commitment device. Every easy move you take early is a hole you have promised to close with no second deal to help.

It makes a natural trio with its siblings on the same grid. Blue Moon is the strict version: same suit, next rank, two redeals. Jungle drops the suit instead and keeps one redeal. Playing the three in order is a short course in how much a single clause in one rule is worth.

For the family's classic form — twelve-card rows with the Aces removed from play — see Gaps, and for David Parlett's two-deck version, Paganini.

One honest note on difficulty. No published win rate for Spaces and Aces that we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. Structurally it is the least forgiving member of the family: the loose fill invites mistakes and there is no redeal to undo them.