Gaps Solitaire

What is Gaps Solitaire?

Gaps (also called Montana, Spaces, or Blue Moon) is a single-deck patience game played on a 4×13 grid. All four aces are removed before play begins, leaving 48 cards and four empty gaps. Your job is to rearrange the cards by sliding them into the gaps until each row holds the complete 2-through-King run of one suit.

The game has no stock, no waste, and no foundations — the entire board is visible from the first move. Every card is face-up, so Gaps is a pure puzzle: you can see exactly what the solution requires, but getting there is surprisingly tricky.

Full rules

A single 52-card deck is shuffled and all 52 cards are dealt into four rows of 13. The four aces are then removed, leaving four gaps. Cards may be moved into gaps one at a time according to these rules:

• A gap in column 1 (the leftmost position) may be filled by any 2.
• Any other gap may only be filled by the card that is the same suit and one rank higher than the card immediately to the left of the gap. For example, a gap to the right of the 7♥ can only accept the 8♥.
• A gap to the right of a King is dead — no card can ever fill it, because there is no card one rank above a King.
• A gap immediately to the right of another gap is also dead until the left gap is filled first.

When no legal moves remain, you may redeal: all cards not part of a locked sequence at the left of any row are gathered, reshuffled, and dealt back into the open positions. A locked sequence starts with a 2 and extends consecutively in suit from the left of a row. You may redeal twice (three passes total).

You win when each of the four rows contains a complete same-suit sequence from 2 to King, with the gap at the far right of that row.

Strategy tips

Protect your 2s. Each row needs a 2 at column 1 to anchor a valid sequence. If all four 2s are buried deep or surrounded by Kings, your redeal situation becomes very difficult. Early in the game, try to move 2s to open left-edge gaps before doing anything else.

Avoid creating Kings at column 12. Once a King lands in the last column of a row, it kills the gap to its right permanently — and since that gap was the only gap in that row, you now need a redeal to recover. Leave Kings for later in the sequence.

Think two moves ahead. When you move a card into a gap, you open a new gap at the card's old position. That new gap might enable another move, or it might be immediately dead. Plan each move so the resulting gap is useful.

Save your redeals. Each redeal shuffles unordered cards, which may undo progress you want to keep. Try to exhaust all move_card moves before redealing, and make sure locked sequences are as long as possible to lock in your progress.

Gaps vs. other open-information games

Gaps belongs to a small family of solitaire games played on a fixed grid with no hidden cards and no draw pile. Unlike FreeCell — where you build onto foundations and use free cells as temporary parking — Gaps has no foundations at all. Every card has exactly one correct final position in one of the four suit runs, and your only tool is the gap-filling mechanic.

This makes Gaps feel more like a sliding-tile puzzle than traditional solitaire. Many deals are solvable within two redeals with good play, but a poor opening position or badly placed Kings can make a deal nearly impossible. Win rates for careful players hover around 50–60% over three passes.

Arrangement and open-information games

• FreeCell — all cards visible; four free cells, four foundations
• Golf — build off a single waste pile; clear the tableau
• Calculation — four foundations built by arithmetic progressions
• Carpet — twenty open holes feeding four ace foundations
• Sir Tommy — deal one at a time to four waste piles

Reference and related guides

• Gaps strategy guide
• FreeCell Solitaire
• All solitaire variants
• Solitaire glossary