Play Midshipman Solitaire — Indian Patience With Two Rows Hidden

Midshipman is the deeper, narrower cousin of Indian Patience. Two decks are dealt into nine columns of four, and the bottom two cards of every column are dealt face down, so eighteen cards are unknown when play begins. The building rule is the one that gives the pair their character: a card may go on a column whose top is one rank higher and of any suit except its own. One card moves at a time, an empty column takes any card, and the 68-card stock is turned once with no redeal. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Midshipman?

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

Setup

• Tableau: nine columns of four cards (36 cards). In each column the first two cards are face down and the top two face up.
• Foundations: eight empty piles, two per suit. Build up by suit, Ace to King.
• Stock: the remaining 68 cards, face down. Waste: empty.

Rules

• Build tableau columns down by one rank in any suit except the same suit: the 7 of hearts goes on the 8 of spades, clubs or diamonds, but never on the 8 of hearts.
• Move one card at a time. Packed runs never travel together.
• When the top card of a column is face down, it is turned face up and becomes playable.
• 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.

Midshipman Strategy

Eighteen hidden cards and a long stock make this a game of information. Reveal early, and reveal cheaply.

• Turn hidden cards before you turn the stock. Every face-down card is a possible Ace or low card. Moving a single exposed card to uncover one costs a move and tells you something; turning the stock costs a card you may never see again.
• The any-suit-but-own rule gives three hosts, not one. Unlike suit building, a 7 of hearts has three possible 8s to land on. Use that freedom to choose the host whose column you would rather build on, and keep the same-suit 8 free for a different card.
• Empty a column, but expect to refill it fast. A space takes any card, which makes it the best tool for reaching a hidden card two cards down. Do not hold a space empty for long; the stock is 68 cards deep and something will always need it.
• Bank low cards from both decks evenly. With two copies of every rank and only one pass, a foundation that races ahead can strand the second copy of a low card under a column you cannot unpack. Keep the twin foundations close.

Midshipman in the Forty Thieves Family

Midshipman is a Thomas Warfield design from Pretty Good Solitaire, built on the same any-suit-but-own rule as Indian Patience, which in turn descends from Napoleon's Folly. The PySol collection expresses the relationship directly: Midshipman is Indian with a deal of two hidden rows and two open ones across nine columns, where Indian deals ten columns of three with one row hidden. The two games make a matched pair for feeling what hidden cards are worth: Indian hides ten, Midshipman eighteen, and the narrower board leaves fewer exposed tops to work with.

The naval name follows Warfield's habit of grouping variants by theme; the rules themselves are the Forty Thieves engine with the suit restriction inverted, so that a card is welcome anywhere except among its own kind.

For the same building rule with fewer hidden cards, play Indian Patience; for the family's strict suit-building original, play Forty Thieves.