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.
A gap after a King is dead for further moves, but that is the correct end of a completed 2-to-King row. Keep a King in place when it extends a correctly ordered row prefix.
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.
Extend correctly ordered row prefixes when you can. A redeal preserves those prefixes and reshuffles the remaining positions; in Gaps, Redeal becomes available only when no legal card move remains.
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. The visible cards let you trace the next gap after each move. A poorly placed King can end a chain, while a King after a complete 2-to-King run marks useful progress.
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
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Gaps is part of The Tileworks · Grid & sequence puzzles.
More Grid & sequence puzzles games
- Addition — Match pairs that total a target.
- Double Montana — Arrange two decks into eight same-suit rows from Two to King.
- Maze — Slide cards into six gaps until four Ace-to-Queen suit runs circle the board.
- Ninety-One — Move top cards among thirteen piles until their values add to 91.
- Poker Squares — Place 25 cards in a 5×5 grid to score ten poker hands.
- Switch-a-roo Poker Solitaire — See 25 cards at once and rearrange them in a poker grid.
Also try
- Klondike (Klondike family) — The patience everyone knows. Draw 1 or 3.
- Seahaven Towers (FreeCell & open packers) — FreeCell cousin: ten columns, same-suit builds, two cells.
- Beleaguered Castle (Castle games) — Eight columns flanking four aces.
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