Beyond the Deck
Patience games are the ones you play while thinking about something else, which is exactly why it helps to have more than one in rotation. This page is a shortlist of 19 games worth adding - all free, all instant in the browser, none of them asking you to download or sign up for anything.
They fall into five groups, and the card family is the biggest by some distance. Beyond it sit the puzzle and arcade games, which reward reading a board rather than remembering one; the board and tile games, which remove the deal entirely; two dice games; and a clock.
| Game | Kind | Why it is on this list | Go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tetris | Puzzle & Arcade | Eleven ways to play the falling-block game, from a calm endless mode to 20G instant gravity. | Play Tetris online → |
| Puzzle | Puzzle & Arcade | Sliding tiles, logic grids, nonograms and a dozen more - a different shape of problem each time. | Play free puzzle games → |
| Mahjong | Puzzle & Arcade | Match free tiles to clear Turtle, Pyramid, Fortress, Dragon, Butterfly, Cat, Spider, Tower, Gate, Crab and Cross layouts, with a daily challenge and leaderboards. | Play Mahjong online → |
| Pac-Man | Puzzle & Arcade | Learn the maze, learn the four ghosts, and find out how far pattern beats reflex. | Play Pac-Man online → |
| FreeCell | Card Games | Open-information patience: nothing hidden, nothing random after the deal, no excuses. | Play FreeCell online → |
| Hearts | Card Games | Duck every heart and the queen of spades - or take the lot and hand the points to everyone else. | Play Hearts online → |
| Spades | Card Games | Call your tricks, make your contract and punish the overbid - the partnership card game that rewards counting over luck. | Play Spades online → |
| Rummy | Card Games | Draw, meld, discard - and read what everyone else is collecting from the pile. | Play Rummy online → |
| Gin Rummy | Card Games | Ten cards, one draw, deadwood to manage and the constant question of whether to knock now or hold for gin. | Play Gin Rummy online → |
| Canasta | Card Games | Melds of seven, wild cards, frozen discard piles and the deep partnership scoring that made Canasta a household game. | Play Canasta online → |
| Blackjack | Card Games | Seventeen variants and a strategy chart - the correct move is known, following it is the hard part. | Play Blackjack online → |
| Checkers | Board & Tile | Eleven genuine draughts variants, from the 8x8 standard to flying kings on a 10x10 board. | Play Checkers online → |
| Reversi | Board & Tile | A minute to learn, and an endgame decided by mobility and parity rather than material. | Play Reversi online → |
| Dominoes | Board & Tile | Tile matching with a scorekeeper attached, across Draw, Block, All Fives and more. | Play Dominoes online → |
| Ludo | Board & Tile | Race four tokens home, and learn to count the six squares behind each of them. | Play Ludo online → |
| Tic Tac Toe | Board & Tile | The 3x3 game is solved - which is exactly why the bigger boards are the interesting ones. | Play Tic Tac Toe online → |
| Yahtzee | Dice & Casino | Five dice, thirteen boxes, and one genuinely interesting decision every single turn. | Play Yahtzee online → |
| Craps | Dice & Casino | Craps, Crapless, New York, High Point, Simplified, Die Rich, Street Craps and Hazard - free chips, no real gambling. | Play Craps online → |
| Chess Clock | Tools | Fischer increment, Bronstein delay, sudden death and hourglass timing - useful for far more than chess. | Use a free online chess clock → |
Rather keep dealing?
None of this is a reason to stop playing Solitaire. If you would rather stay, the main game is one click away, the rules hub covers how everything works, and the FAQ answers the common questions.
Card-player questions
Which of these is closest to Solitaire?
The first group on this page is ordered with the closest relatives first, so start at the top. Beyond that it depends what you like about Solitaire - the puzzle and tile games reward reading a board, the card games reward counting and memory, and the dice games put the randomness in the foreground where you can see it.
Are they free, or is there a catch?
They are free in the same way Solitaire.now is free: every mode, every daily challenge and every leaderboard, with no paywall, no trial and no download. The card and casino titles use play money only - there is no real gambling in any of them.
Do these open in the same browser tab?
They are ordinary websites, so they behave however your browser is set to behave - nothing here hijacks a tab or opens a pop-up. Each one loads its game directly on the page, with no launcher, no plugin and no install step.
How long does a game take?
It varies enormously. The dice and arcade games are usually done inside five minutes. Card games run ten to twenty. A board game against a thinking opponent can take half an hour, and the tile puzzles take as long as you let them - there is no clock on most of them.