Also known as Signora and Queen of Italy, this is an excellent patience which calls for considerable foresight. Its special feature is that all the blocking cards (the problems you will have to dodge round ) are laid out in a line at the beginning.

Shuffle cards two packs together. Deal out 11 cards in an overlapping line, the ‘terrace’, so that you can see what they all are. Leave space below them for the eight bases on which you will be building. Below that deal out four cards side by side, then stop and think.

At this stage you must choose one of the four cards. That card and the other seven of the same rank will form the bases for all the building, though you have to wait for the others to appear. The choice will depend on the cards in the terrace.

Having chosen your base card, put it in the building area, fill the gap it occupied from the pack, and deal out another five cards to make a row of nine. These form the working area, where packing is allowed.

Continue packing these cards, taking out base cards for building and filling in the gaps until you get stuck, then turn over cards from the pack to start forming a waste pile. When you get to the end of the pack, there is no redeal if the high poker cards are not all built onto the bases by then you have failed.

Cards are built up on the bases in sequence, alternating red and black cards and increasing, turning the corner from King to Ace to 2 when you reach it. The exposed cards in the working area, the top card of the waste pile and the top card of the terrace are available for building.

Within the working area, packing is done in descending sequence, alternating red and black cards, turning the corner from 2 to Ace to King as necessary. Only one card at a time may be moved- sequences in the working area can only be moved by building- and gaps which appear may only be filled with the top card of the waste pile.

Cards from the terrace may not be used for packing - they must be built directly. The only cards available for packing are single cards in the working area and the top card of the waste pile.

The illustration shows a game shortly after the waste pile has been started. Kings were chosen as base cards, and three of them have been found. One of these has been built up to a black 3, getting rid of the first two cards of the terrace in the process.

In order to get rid of the next card, the ♣ 9, it will be necessary to find a red 4, a black 5, and so on up to a red 8 (the 5, the 6 and the 8 are already waiting in the working area, so this won’t be too difficult). Note that it is illegal to pack the ♥ 8 and ♠ 9 onto the ♥ 10 in the working area, since only one card may be moved at a time.

The art of getting this patience to turn out is to work out in advance where the terrace cards are going, and not to do any building which does not contribute directly to this aim. For much of the time you will be turning cards from the pack to the waste pile, waiting for some particular playing poker card to come up so that you can move the top card off the terrace.

While doing this, though, you can prepare a ‘reception committee’ for the next cards in line down the terrace. It hardly matters how big the waste pile becomes it has an almost magical way of disappearing once the terrace has been got rid of. With care this patience can be turned out successfully about half the number of attempts.

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Games for Five or More Players