Eight Off

Here’s a game in the same family as The Towers and FreeCell, and just as addictive. Other solitaire programs for the Mac have helped to make Eight Off popular, and we are pleased to respond to many customers’ requests by including it in Solitaire Till Dawn.

Layout Size: Fits nicely on a medium-size screen.

Difficulty: A good player should be able to win the majority of games, at least if you are willing to make patient use of the Undo and Redo commands. We recommend that this game be treated as a puzzle: feel free to back up and try a different approach whenever you get stuck.

Rules: Shuffle the deck and lay out 48 cards in eight tableau piles, face up and fanned down, so that there are six cards in each tableau. Above the tableaus are the eight piles of the reserve, and to the right are the four foundations in a vertical column. The four remaining cards are placed face-up in four of the reserve piles; the rest of the reserve and the foundations begin the game empty.

Tableaus build down in suit. Top cards of tableaus are available for play on other tableaus, on foundations, or on the reserve. Any card may be played to an empty tableau. (The correct and more difficult rule is that only Kings may be played to an empty tableau; but we believe most Mac users are used to the easier rule. If you prefer a harder game, you may voluntarily follow the Kings-only rule.) An empty reserve can hold any card, but each can hold only one card at a time; and of course such cards can be removed only by correctly playing them back onto tableaus or foundations.

(See picture: Eight Off. The Queen of Spades can be brought down from the foundations and played onto the King of Spades. The 5 of Diamonds and the 9 of Spades beneath it can be played to the reserve, revealing the Jack of Spades. Now the Jack and 10 of Spades can be played onto the Queen, and the 9 brought back down from the reserve and played on the 10, forming a K-Q-J-10-9 build in Spades. With four reserve spaces still left open, many other plays are also possible.)

On the Screen: Solitaire Till Dawn will lay out the cards for you as usual. The rules state that you can move only one card at a time. But as a shortcut, Solitaire Till Dawn will allow you to move a build if there are enough empty reserve piles, because you would have been able to accomplish the same effect by temporarily moving the extra cards into the reserve.