Seven Devils

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Seven Devils is arguably the most difficult of all solitaire games. It is a two-pack game widely available as a computer version.

28 cards are dealt out to seven diminishing columns with the bottom card of each column face up, and a further seven cards (the “devil”) are dealt face up to the right of the columns.

The aim is to move all the cards into thirteen-card sequences on the goal piles (at the right of the board), ascending in sequence and following suit, starting with the Aces.

Cards on the table can be stacked red-on-black in descending sequence. Any card can be used to fill an empty column.

Only one card can be moved at a time, but if there are empty columns multiple cards can be moved as if the empty columns were used as temporary spots.

The seven devils in the right-hand stack cannot be placed on other stacks, and can be moved only to the goal piles.

The difficulty of this game arises from four factors

• Many games are not winnable from the start. If two higher cards overlie any card in the same suit in the devil, the lower card can never be reached.
• Even if this is not the case, if high cards overlay lower ones in the devil, the low cards can be very difficult to reach.
• If low cards, like twos or threes, cannot be played to a column, they will be buried in the discard pile and become difficult to retrieve.
• Key low cards may be hidden face down in columns where they may well prove inaccessible