Two-deck patience
Intrigue Solitaire
Eight Queens hold their columns while you split the pack into Five-piles running down to the King and Six-piles running up to the Jack.
Build the Five-piles down to the King and the Six-piles up to the Jack, regardless of suit. Park a card on a vacant Queen column to free a blocker.
Five-piles — build down 5 → 4 → 3 → 2 → A → K, regardless of suit
Six-piles — build up 6 → 7 → 8 → 9 → 10 → J, regardless of suit
Queen columns — only the top card moves; a vacant column takes any card
Q♥ base
Q♦ base
Q♥ base
Q♣ base
Q♦ base
Q♠ base
Q♣ base
Q♠ base
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What is Intrigue Solitaire?
Intrigue is a two-deck patience built around an unusual split of the pack. The eight Queens are not discarded as they are in its sister game Salic Law — instead they stay on the table as the immovable heads of eight columns. Everything else is sorted onto sixteen foundations that run in two opposite directions: down from the Fives and up from the Sixes.
The whole deck is dealt at once and only the top card of each column can move, so the order in which cards were buried during the deal is the puzzle you have to unpick. There is no stock to draw from and no redeal to bail you out.
Full rules
Two standard 52-card decks are combined into a 104-card pack — eight of every rank. The eight Queens become the bases of eight columns; the first Queen dealt opens column one and each subsequent Queen opens another, up to eight. The remaining 96 cards fill sixteen foundations.
Eight foundations are Five-piles. Each is opened by a Five and built downward, ignoring suit, in the wrap-around order 5 → 4 → 3 → 2 → A → K — the King lands on top of the Ace to finish the pile at six cards. The other eight foundations are Six-piles, each opened by a Six and built upward 6 → 7 → 8 → 9 → 10 → J, again six cards and again regardless of suit. Sixteen foundations of six cards is 96 cards, which with the eight Queen bases accounts for all 104.
During play only the exposed top of a column moves. It can go to a foundation it continues, or — the single tableau move — onto a vacant column, meaning one peeled down to its Queen. You win when all sixteen foundations are complete, which is the same as every column being reduced to just its Queen.
Where the difficulty comes from
Because the foundations split the ranks into two camps, every card you turn up belongs to exactly one staircase. A 2 only ever helps a Five-pile; a 10 only ever helps a Six-pile. That means the eight copies of each rank are a fixed, finite supply, and a foundation that needs a specific rank cannot borrow from the other camp.
With only eight columns and zero vacant ones at the start, your sole maneuvering tool is a column you manage to empty down to its Queen. Spend that vacancy on the wrong blocker and a needed low card can stay pinned forever, because nothing recycles back into play.
Two-deck patience game family
- Salic Law — the sister game, Queens removed and eight A-to-J foundations
- Sultan — eight foundations surrounding the Sultan King of Hearts
- Lady of the Manor — two-deck foundations built regardless of suit
- Big Ben — clock-face foundations built by suit from a two-deck pack