Play Windmill Solitaire

Windmill Solitaire game info

• Family: Reserved builders
- Decks: Two decks (104 cards)
• Game time: Medium
• Chance of winning: Low
• Also known as: Propeller Solitaire

Windmill has a unique layout, fun gameplay but rather low chance of completing a game.

Objective

The goal in Windmill Solitaire is to move 52 cards onto the central foundation pile (also referred to as primary foundation) and 13 cards on each of the 4 surrounding king foundations (also referred to as secondary foundations).

Deal & Layout

Windmill Solitaire is played with two standard 52-card decks, 104 cards in total.

An Ace is dealt face up to the center of the table to form the primary foundation.

Then, eight cards are dealt face up around the primary foundation (two above, two below, two left, two right), forming a windmill or cross shape. These are the reserve piles and sometimes referred to as the sails.

The remaining cards go into the stock.

Around the windmill are four additional foundation piles, the king foundations or secondary foundations. These are empty at the start.

Allowed moves

The top cards of the king foundations, reserve piles and waste pile are playable.

The primary foundation is built up, irrespective of suit. Building is continuous, meaning that an Ace can be placed on a King.

The king foundations start with a King and are built down, also irrespective of suit. Cards from the king foundations can be moved to the primary foundation.

The reserve piles can hold only one card at a time. Cards from the reserve can be played to the king foundations or primary foundation. When an empty space is created in the reserve, it is immediately filled with the top card from the waste, or the top card from the stock if the waste is empty.

Cards from the waste can be moved to the reserve, the king foundations, or the primary foundation.

Clicking the stock will flip a card onto the waste pile. When the stock is empty, it cannot be reset.

Tips & Tricks

• When possible, add cards to the primary foundation.
• Because reserve piles are automatically filled from the waste / stock, it can be helpful to flip a few cards to the waste before moving a card from the reserve to a foundation pile. This will ensure a more useful card will be moved to the reserve. E.g. avoid having two cards with the same rank in the reserve piles.
• Remember that you can move cards from the king foundations to the primary foundation.

Variants and similar games

• Edelweiss: Same rules and layout as Windmill, except there are six reserve piles instead of eight, and the reserve piles can be built on (regardless of suit).
• Dutch Windmill: Same rules and layout as Windmill, except the primary foundation starts with Ace of Hearts, and the four king foundations each start with a black King card.
• Four Seasons: Layout resembles a small windmill, with five tableau piles in a cross and four foundation piles in the corners.
• Little Windmill: Layout looks like the layout of Four Seasons. Slightly different rules compared to Windmill.

System requirements

Windmill Solitaire can be played in all modern browsers, on all device types (desktop, tablet, mobile), and on all operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, ...).