SolitareGames

Solitaire variant

Perpetual Motion Solitaire

A deterministic four-pile patience game where every action is forced. Deal four cards, move matching top ranks left, discard completed fours, and find out whether the deal clears or cycles forever.

Seed: 94005Moves: 0Round: 1Stock: 52Discarded: 0/52Timer: 00:00Status: in progress

Deal four cards to begin the first round of Perpetual Motion.

Stock

52 cards

Deal four cards whenever no visible matches remain.

Discard

0 groups
None

A finished group only leaves play when all four equal ranks stack together.

Next action

Deal Four

Hint: deal one card to each of the four piles before resolving anything else.

Visible piles: 0/4Seen stock loops: 1History: 0

Tableau

Only the top card of each pile matters. Matching ranks collapse left, then completed fours are discarded.

Pile 10 cards
No card
Pile 20 cards
No card
Pile 30 cards
No card
Pile 40 cards
No card

How the deal works

The board uses four tableau piles. You always deal one card to each pile, then collapse equal visible ranks into the leftmost matching pile. Whenever one pile holds all four cards of a rank on top, that group is discarded.

Once the stock is empty, the piles are gathered from right to left and redealt. If that gather step recreates a stock order that appeared before, the game is effectively stuck in a loop and the deal is over.

Related solitaire variants

  • Clock Solitaire for another nearly mechanical patience game with almost no player choice.
  • Birthday Solitaire if you want short passes through a stock with more planning around recycling order.
  • Nestor Solitaire for a more visible matching puzzle where the choices actually matter.

Why players revisit it

Perpetual Motion is famous less for tactical depth than for its rhythm. The fascination comes from watching whether a clean sequence of forced actions collapses the deck or runs into a repeating cycle.

What counts as progress

Progress is measured by how many four-of-a-kind groups leave play. The board tracks both discarded cards and completed rounds so you can see whether the game is moving toward a finish or simply looping back to familiar stock orders.