Beleaguered Castle is a patience or

solitaire Solitaire is any tabletop game which one can play by oneself, usually with cards, but also with dominoes. The term "solitaire" is also used for single-player games of concentration and skill using a set layout tiles, pegs or stones. These game ...

card game played with a deck of 52

playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...

s. It is sometimes described as " Freecell without cells" because its game play is somewhat akin to the popular solitaire computer game of that name but without extra empty spaces to maneuver. Beleaguered Castle is also called Laying Siege and Sham Battle.

History

Beleaguered Castle is first recorded by Dick in 1883 and has been a regular feature in games compendia since then.Dick (1883), pp. 70–72.

Rules

First, the player removes the aces from the deck and aligns them vertically without overlapping them to form the

foundations Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

. Then cards are dealt to the left and right of the aces, forming eight rows of six overlapping cards each, in a distinctive

tableau Tableau (French for 'little table' literally, also used to mean 'picture'; tableaux or, rarely, tableaus) may refer to: Arts * ''Tableau'', a series of four paintings by Piet Mondrian titled ''Tableau I'' through to ''Tableau IV'' * ''Tableau viv ...

layout with wings on either side of the foundations. The top card of each row (the exposed card) is

available In reliability engineering, the term availability has the following meanings: * The degree to which a system, subsystem or equipment is in a specified operable and committable state at the start of a mission, when the mission is called for at ...

for play either on the foundations or on any other row. The foundations are built up to kings by suit. Cards in the rows are

built down Games of patience, or (card) solitaires as they are usually called in North America, have their own 'language' of specialised terms such as "building down", "packing", "foundations", "talon" and "tableau". Once learnt they are helpful in de ...

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is calle ...

regardless of suit. Once a row becomes empty, it can be filled by any card. The game is won when all of the cards are built onto the foundations.

Variants

The following are cited as variants by Parlett:Parlett (1979), pp. 314–315. * Citadel, in which any card can be dealt onto the foundations during dealing. The other cards that aren't built are played as in Beleaguered Castle. *

Fortress A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

(or Fort) and the closely related Chessboard (or Fives) both have five rows on each side of the foundations and allow building of sequences up and down in the same suit. * Streets and Alleys, where the aces are included in the shuffling, resulting in the rows at the left of the foundations having seven cards each."Streets and Alleys" (p.312) in ''Bicycle Official Rules of Card Games'' by Joli Quentin Kansil (ed.), 1999.

Related game

Castle of Indolence is another game recorded only by Dick (1883, 85) which has some similarities to Beleaguered Castle. It is played with two decks (and hence eight foundations). Cards can be moved to the foundations regardless of suit. The top cards of four reserve piles (initially holding 13 cards) are available for moving on the foundations or rows.

Pop culture

In the 2011 film ''

Source Code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

'', a card sequence from Beleaguered Castle forms the call sign for the Source Code program.

Footnotes

References

Bibliography

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. * Parlett, David (1979). ''The Penguin Book of Patience'', London: Penguin. {{Solitaire Open packers Single-deck patience card games