Clock patience, also known as clock solitaire is a solitaire

Solitaire

Solitaire is any tabletop game which one can play by oneself or with other people. The solitaire card game Klondike is often known as simply Solitaire....

 card game

Card game

A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games...

 with the cards laid out to represent the face of a clock

Clock

A clock is an instrument used to indicate, keep, and co-ordinate time. The word clock is derived ultimately from the Celtic words clagan and clocca meaning "bell". A silent instrument missing such a mechanism has traditionally been known as a timepiece...

.

Rules

One deck of cards (minus jokers

Joker (playing card)

Joker is a special type of playing card found in most modern decks, or else a type of tile in some Mahjong game sets.-Name:It is believed that the term "Joker" comes from a mispronunciation of Jucker, the German/Alsatian name for the game Euchre. The card was originally introduced in about 1860 for...

) 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 centre of the circle.

The twelve positions

Clock position

Clock position is a way of communicating the relative direction of an object using the analogy of a 12-hour clock. One imagines a clock face lying either upright or flat in front of oneself, and identifies the twelve hour markings with the directions in which they point.Using this analogy, 12...

 around the circle represent the 12 hour clock and the pile in the middle represent 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 are revealed. The game is lost if all four Kings are revealed and face-down cards are still present.

This is a game of zero skill and is a purely mechanical process. The chances of winning are 1 in 13.

Variations

There is also a variation of Clock Patience, commonly known as Watch. It is played like Clock Patience except when the fourth king appears, the player can continue the play by replacing the king with a still faced-down card. Game ends when that fourth King reappears.

The Clock

The Clock (solitaire)

The Clock is a very easy game of solitaire played with 52 cards. You have 13 foundations to drop cards. Each foundation has a specific card value . You build 4 layers of cards on each foundation that must alternate in color .-Setup: Use one decks of cards. Shuffle it and you are ready to go....

 is a variation from a German solitaire book that describes a completely different rule for this game that depends more on the skill not to miss cards to be played to the foundations. The original is called "Die Uhr" and is a stock and waste type of solitaire. The rule for The Clock

The Clock (solitaire)

The Clock is a very easy game of solitaire played with 52 cards. You have 13 foundations to drop cards. Each foundation has a specific card value . You build 4 layers of cards on each foundation that must alternate in color .-Setup: Use one decks of cards. Shuffle it and you are ready to go....

 is from a book by Rudolf Heinrich 18th edition that dates back to 1976.

In popular culture

• Clock solitaire was featured in chapter 45 of the Yu-Gi-Oh!
  Yu-Gi-Oh!
  is a Japanese manga created by Kazuki Takahashi. It has produced a franchise that includes multiple anime shows, a trading card game and numerous video games...
  
  manga
  Manga
  Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
  
  . In the storyline, if Yugi Mutou
  Yugi Mutou
  is the protagonist of the manga and anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!. He is a young boy whose body becomes inhabited by the spirit of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh named when he completes the Millennium Puzzle.-Character design:...
  
   drew all four threes face up, his best friend, Anzu Mazaki
  Anzu Mazaki
  , known in the English anime and English video games as Téa Gardner, is a fictional character in the manga and anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!.Anzu's given name is sometimes written in hiragana next to the kanji in order to emphasize the fact that her name is read as "Anzu" instead of "Kyoko."-Character...
  
   (English anime Téa Gardner), would get blown up in the number three car of a Ferris wheel. Yugi manages to draw all four kings before the last three could be drawn.
• Claudia is seen by Lestat playing Clock Solitaire in a chapter of The Vampire Lestat
  The Vampire Lestat
  The Vampire Lestat is a novel by Anne Rice, and the second in her Vampire Chronicles, following Interview with the Vampire. Many events in the two books appear to contradict each other...
  
  .
• Linda is often seen playing Clock solitaire in The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.