Time:0:00
Moves:0
Citadel plays exactly like Beleaguered Castle once the cards are out. The difference is the deal: any card that fits a foundation goes straight there, so you start with a head start and some rows shorter than others.
Those short rows are the real gift. Fewer cards in a row means you can empty it sooner, and in this family an empty row is the most useful thing on the table.
The four Aces start on the foundations, in a column down the middle. The other 48 cards are dealt face up, a round at a time, into four rows on each side. Any card that fits a foundation goes there instead, and its place in that row stays empty, so the rows end up with different lengths.
Move all 52 cards to the foundations. Once the remaining cards can all go up in order, autocomplete finishes the game for you.
We ran our own solver on 200 shuffled deals of this version. It found a win in 79 of 200 (40%), showed that 22 could not be won, and ran out of its budget of 20,000 positions a deal on 99.
Those undecided deals may still be winnable, so treat the win count as a minimum. The solver can see every card, including face-down ones, so it measures what the cards allow, not how often a person will win.
David Parlett lists Citadel as a variant of Beleaguered Castle.
Love Citadel? Try these other solitaire variants on Solitaire Scramble:
Only the deal. In Beleaguered Castle every row gets six cards. In Citadel, cards that fit a foundation go there during the deal, so the foundations start further along and the rows have different lengths.
A card that goes to a foundation during the deal leaves its place in the row empty, and the deal carries on to the next row.
Yes. Drag the top card of a foundation onto a row where it fits, or onto an empty row.
No. Any 8 can go on any 9. Suits only matter on the foundations.