Penguin 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...

, invented by David Parlett

David Parlett

David Parlett is a games scholar from South London, who has studied both card games and board games. His published works include many popular books on games and the more academic volumes "Oxford Guide to Card Games" and "Oxford History of Board Games", both now out of print...

, which uses a deck of 52 playing card

Playing card

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games...

s. The game play is similar to other solitaire card games as Freecell

FreeCell

FreeCell is a solitaire-based card game played with a 52-card standard deck. It is fundamentally different from most solitaire games in that nearly all deals can be solved...

 and Eight Off

Eight Off

Eight Off is a form of Patience, named after its employment of eight cells, played with one deck of playing cards. The object of the game is to move all the cards into the foundations.-Rules:...

.

Rules

After shuffling the cards, the cards are dealt from left to right into seven columns, each with seven rows. The first card dealt is called the "beak" (in the example below, the five of spades). When the three other cards with the same rank appear, they are immediately placed on the foundations, and the next card dealt takes its place in the tableau so that no empty spaces appear.

The object of the game is to build the foundations up in suit up to the card that is a rank lower than the beak. For example, if the beak is a five, the last card of each foundation should be a four; if it is an ace, the last card of each foundation should be a king.

The cards on the tableau are built down by suit. Cards are moved one at a time, unless a suit sequence of cards is formed, which can be moved as a unit. Unlike Freecell, such a sequence is treated as one card and does not require enough free cells for all the cards in the sequence. When an empty column occurs in the tableau, only a card of the rank directly beneath the beak or a suit sequence starting with that rank maybe placed on it. (For example, if the beak is an ace, only a king or a suit sequence starting with a king may be used.)

There are seven cells, one above each of the seven columns, which can be used to store a single card to be played later. These seven cells are collectively called the "flipper".

The game is won when all cards are built onto the foundations. The game has a high probability of being won. One good strategy is to first work towards freeing the beak.