Clock or Sundial is a luck-based
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 with the cards laid out to represent the face of a
clock
A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...
. It is closely related to
Travellers.
Clock is a purely mechanical process with no room for skill, and the chances of winning are exactly 1 in 13. It has a feature described by Parlett as '
shuttling' in which a card is placed at the bottom of a pile and the next card to be played comes off the top of the same pile.
[Parlett (1979), p. 185.]
Names
This game was known in the 19th century as The Clock, but the name has since been shortened to Clock. It was a variation of
Wandering Card, an old game of European origin.
[Cheney (1869), pp. 66–69.] Some sources give alternative names as Hidden Cards, Four of a Kind and Travellers.
[Moyse (1950), pp. 15–16.] However,
Four of a Kind Four of a kind may refer to:
* Four of a kind (poker), a type of poker hand
* Four of a Kind (card game), a patience or solitaire
* ''Four of a Kind'' (TV series), an American reality series about quadruplets
* ''Four of a Kind'' (film), an Austral ...
has a different layout and mechanism, whilst
Hidden Cards and
Travellers are also variations of Wandering Card with different layouts and shuttling procedures from Clock.
There are other unrelated patiences or solitaires also sometimes called Clock or The Clock:
*
Big Ben
Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster, at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, England, and the name is frequently extended to refer also to the clock and the clock tower. The officia ...
*
Grandfather's Clock
* Clock, member of the
Simple Addition or Totals family, related to Block Eleven
Rules
One deck of cards (minus
jokers) is used. The deck is shuffled and twelve piles of four cards each are laid out, face down, in a circle. The remaining four cards are placed, also face down, in a pile in the center of the circle.
The
twelve positions around the circle represent the
12-hour clock
The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin , translating to "before midday") and p.m. (from Latin , translating to "after midday"). For different opinions on represent ...
and the pile in the middle represents the hands.
Play starts by turning over the top card of the central pile.
When a card is revealed, it is placed face up under the pile at the corresponding hour (i.e., Ace = 1 o'clock, 2 = 2 o'clock, etc. The Jack is 11 o'clock and the Queen is 12 o'clock) and the top card of the pile of that hour is turned over. If a King is revealed, it is placed face up under the central pile.
Play continues in this fashion and the game is won if all the cards (including four Kings) are revealed; turning up the fourth king means you will have completed the clock and won the game. The game is lost if the fourth King is turned up while any cards remain face down.
Variations
In a variation of Clock commonly called Watch, players can continue the play when the fourth king appears, by replacing it with a still face-down card. The game ends when that fourth king reappears.
The Clock (sometimes also called "German Clock") is a stock and waste type of solitaire originally called "Die Uhr", and described in a German solitaire book by Rudolf Heinrich from 1976.
[Heinrich, Rudolf (2011). ''Die schönsten Patiencen'', Perlen-Reihe 641, 35th edition. Vienna: Perlen-Reihe Verlag. ] This gives rules for very different game-play that depends on skill not to miss cards that can be played to the foundations.
See also
*
Big Ben
Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster, at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, England, and the name is frequently extended to refer also to the clock and the clock tower. The officia ...
*
The Clock (German Clock)
*
Grandfather's Clock
*
Travellers (Four of a Kind, Hidden Cards, Wandering Card)
*
List of patiences and solitaires
*
Glossary of patience and solitaire terms
Footnotes
References
Bibliography
*
Cheney, Mrs. E. D. (1869). ''Patience: A Series of Games with Cards''. 2nd edn, with additions. Boston: Lee & Shepard. NY: Lee, Shepard & Dillingham.
* Foster, Robert Frederick (1897). ''Foster’s Complete Hoyle.'' 3rd edn. New York and London: Frederick. A. Stokes.
* Moyse, Alphonse Jr. (1950). ''150 Ways to Play Solitaire''. Cincinnati: USPCC. 128 pp.
*
Parlett, David (1979). ''The Penguin Book of Patience'', London: Penguin.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clock Patience
Simple builders
Single-deck patience card games
French deck card games