Play Waning Moon Solitaire — Forty Thieves Across Thirteen Columns

Waning Moon takes Forty Thieves and spreads it wider. Two decks, eight foundations and the same strict suit-by-suit building one card at a time, but the deal is thirteen columns of four: 52 cards open on the table and only 52 left in the stock. The Aces are dealt with everything else, so before any foundation can start you have to dig one out. Thomas Warfield designed it for Pretty Good Solitaire, and it has since been adopted by the PySol collection. One pass through the stock, no redeal. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Waning Moon?

Goal: build all eight foundations from Ace to King by suit, using both decks.

Setup

• Tableau: thirteen columns of four cards (52 cards), all face up.
• Foundations: eight empty piles, two per suit. Build up by suit, Ace to King.
• Stock: the remaining 52 cards, face down. Waste: empty.

Rules

• Build tableau columns down by suit: the 7 of clubs goes on the 8 of clubs only.
• Move one card at a time. Packed runs never travel together.
• An empty column accepts any card.
• Click the stock to turn one card to the waste. The waste's top card may be played to the tableau or a foundation.
• One pass only. When the stock is empty there is no redeal.
• Foundations build up by suit from the Ace. Cards on a foundation stay there.

Waning Moon Strategy

Thirteen exposed tops make this the most open board in the Forty Thieves line, and the single-card rule makes every one of them precious.

• Dig for Aces before you dig for anything else. Nothing banks until an Ace is free, and half the stock will arrive with no home while the foundations are closed. Find the shallowest Ace in the deal and open it first.
• Clear a column to make a working space. Four-card columns empty quickly when their cards have hosts. A space is where a stranded stock card goes, and with no redeal you will need one before the stock is half gone.
• Do not bury a needed card under a run you cannot move. Because only one card moves at a time, a card you build onto a column is only as free as everything above it. Build on columns whose deeper cards you have already used or do not need.
• Turn the stock only when the tableau is quiet. Every stock card that cannot be placed is lost to the waste for good. Before each click, make every legal tableau move that helps, so the arriving card has the most possible hosts.

Waning Moon in the Forty Thieves Family

Waning Moon is a Thomas Warfield design from Pretty Good Solitaire, and it keeps the classic Forty Thieves rules intact while changing only the deal: thirteen columns instead of ten, and therefore twelve fewer cards in the stock. The published rule pages at BVS, Goodsol and Solitaire Central agree on every detail, and the PySol collection carries it under the same name. It is easy to confuse with two of its neighbours. Lucas also deals thirteen columns, but only three deep, and founds all eight Aces before play begins; Thirty-Nine Steps, another PySol member, deals thirteen columns of three with the Aces left in. Waning Moon is the one with four-deep columns and every Ace still to be found.

The name is a small joke about the deal: with the stock reduced to a sliver, the part of the game you cannot see is waning from the first move.

For the same rules on the classic ten-column board, play Forty Thieves; for a gentler start with the Aces already up, play Lucas.