Accordion is a patience or

card solitaire Patience (Europe), card solitaire or solitaire (US/Canada), is a genre of card games whose common feature is that the aim is to arrange the cards in some systematic order or, in a few cases, to pair them off in order to discard them. Most are inte ...

using a single deck of playing cards. It is so named because it looks like accordion pleats, which have to be ironed out. The object is to compress the entire deck into one pile like an accordion.

Name

The name Accordion comes from the appearance of the layout as it alternately grows and shrinks during play. It was originally called The Idle Year and alternative names occasionally encountered include Tower of Babel and Methuselah. It is called The Idle Year because "with a well-shuffled pack, it will require about that length of time to accomplish it." Presumably the same logic applies to Methuselah. It may be the same game that the Italians call Qui Sace (Who Knows?).Bernard (2012), p. 92.

History

Rules for The Idle Year are published by

William Brisbane Dick William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

in 1883 and by "Tarbart" in 1905. Dick's rules are strict: a packet must be moved if possible and, if there is a choice, it must be moved to its nearest neighbour. Tarbart's rules are lax: a packet that can be moved need not be and judgment should be exercised as to whether to play it or not.Dick (1883), pp. 51–52."Tarbart" (1905), pp. 25–26. The game recorded by Wood & Goddard in 1940 as Tower of Babel allows a player the choice of whether to play an available packet to its left-hand neighbour or to the third packet to the left, but does not say if a player can continue dealing without moving.Wood & Goddard (1940), p. 256. The name Accordion appears in the 1950s, Culbertson and

Goren Goren ( he, גֹּרֶן, גורן, ''lit.'' Granary) is a moshav in northern Israel. Located in the Western Galilee near Ma'alot-Tarshiha, it falls under the jurisdiction of Ma'ale Yosef Regional Council. In it had a population of . History Th ...

allowing a further deal before deciding whether or not to move a packet.Culbertson (1957), p. 342.Goren (1961), p. 449. Parlett equates Accordion with Idle Year, Methuselah and Tower of Babel, but insists that a packet must be played if it can, leaving any choice between the 1st and 3rd packets to the left to the player.Parlett (1979), p. 183. The game has been included in numerous compendia in recent decades, usually under the name Accordion.

Rules

The cards from the entire deck are spread out in a single line. A pile can be moved on top of another pile immediately to its left or moved three piles to its left if the top cards of each pile have the same suit or rank. Gaps left behind are filled by moving piles to the left. The player is not required to make a particular move if they prefer not to. Here is an example: : Here, either or can be placed over the . These are the only allowable moves. The game is won when all cards are compressed into one pile.

Variants

Other eliminator games in the style of Accordion appeared a decade later in the 1890s: The Queen and Her Lad is first recorded by

Mary Whitmore Jones Mary Elizabeth Whitmore Jones ( 1823 – 1915) was an English author and the first female heir of Chastleton House. She was unmarried and did not have any children.Royal Marriage Royal Marriage is a Patience game using a deck of 52 playing cards. It is an eliminator game in the style of the solitaire game Accordion. The game is so called because the player seems to remove anything that comes between the Queen and the Kin ...

where the aim is to reduce the entire deck to King and Queen of the same suit, these being placed at the start and end of the layout at the beginning of the game.

Strategy

The odds of winning have been estimated as being around one in a hundred."Accordion" (p.202) in ''Hoyle's Rules of Games'' (3rd edition) by Philip D. Morehead (ed.), 2001. Given how difficult it is to achieve this when cards are dealt one at a time,

Alfred Sheinwold Alfred (Freddy) Sheinwold (January 26, 1912 – March 8, 1997) was an American bridge player, administrator, international team captain, and prolific writer. He and Edgar Kaplan developed the Kaplan–Sheinwold bidding system. Among other administr ...

suggests in his book ''101 Best Family Card Games'' () that it may be considered a win when there are five piles or fewer at the end of the game. The best chance of a successful game comes by identifying 4 cards with the same rank that are close and near the end of the layout at the start of the game, and to try to move these four "sweeper" cards together in a group towards the front of the layout, not covering them with other cards until the end of the game.

Footnotes

References

Literature

Bernard, April April Bernard (born 1956) is an American poet. She was born and raised in New England, and graduated from Harvard University. She has worked as a senior editor at '' Vanity Fair'', '' Premiere'', and ''Manhattan, inc''. In the early 1990s, she t ...

(2012). ''Miss Fuller: A Novel''. Hanover, NH: Steerforth. *

Culbertson, Ely Elie Almon Culbertson (July 22, 1891 – December 27, 1955), known as Ely Culbertson, was an American contract bridge entrepreneur and personality dominant during the 1930s. He played a major role in the popularization of the new game and was wide ...

(1957). ''Culbertson’s Card Games Complete'', ed. Hubert Phillips. Argo. *

Dick, William Brisbane Dick & Fitzgerald was a 19th-century United States publisher, founded by William Brisbane Dick (1827–1901) and Lawrence R. Fitzgerald (1826-1881), based in New York City. Their address at one time was 18 Ann Street. Dick and Fitzgerald was a pu ...

(1883). ''Dick's Games of Patience, Or, Solitaire with Cards''. 44 games. NY: Dick & Fitzgerald. *

Goren, Charles Henry Charles Henry Goren (March 4, 1901 – April 3, 1991) was an American bridge player and writer who significantly developed and popularized the game. He was the leading American bridge personality in the 1950s and 1960s – or 1940s and 1950s, as " ...

(1961). ''Goren’s Hoyle Encyclopedia of Games''. NY: Greystone Press. *

Professor Hoffmann Professor Hoffmann (1839–1919) was the pseudonym of Angelo John Lewis, an English-born barrister and writer who has been described as "the most prolific and influential magic author and translator until modern times."

ngelo Lewis(1892). ''The Illustrated Book of Patience Games''. London: Routledge. *

Morehead, Albert Albert Hodges Morehead, Jr. (August 7, 1909 – October 5, 1966) was a writer for ''The New York Times'', a bridge player, a lexicographer, and an author and editor of reference works. Early years Morehead was born in Flintstone, Taylor County, ...

and Geoffrey Mott-Smith (1949). ''The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience.'' New York: Longmans. *

and Geoffrey Mott-Smith (2001). ''The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience.'' Foulsham, Slough. * Parlett, David (1979). ''The Penguin Book of Patience'', Penguin, London. {ISBN 0-7139-1193-X * "Tarbart" (1905). ''Games of Patience''. 2nd edn. De La Rue. *

Whitmore Jones, Mary Mary Elizabeth Whitmore Jones ( 1823 – 1915) was an English author and the first female heir of Chastleton House. She was unmarried and did not have any children.Closed non-builders Single-deck patience card games Year of introduction missing