Play La Belle Lucie Solitaire Online for Free (No Signup Required)
Spread the deck into three-card fans and dig for every Ace before you're stuck. Two shuffled redeals are your only lifeline, and win rates hover near 40%.
La Belle Lucie Solitaire is one of the oldest and most beloved fan games, first printed in Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Patience in the 1870s, where it also went by the names Midnight Oil and The Fan. The whole deck is spread into little three-card fans, and from that pretty flower-bed you try to send every card home to the four foundations.
What sets the family apart is the redeal. When you run out of moves, you gather up every card still sitting in the fans, reshuffle the lot, and deal them back out into fresh fans of three. La Belle Lucie grants you this shuffled redeal twice, which is exactly enough to rescue a deal that looked hopeless a moment before. It is a game of patience in the truest sense, with a win rate close to 40% for a careful player who plans several moves ahead.
Because a single buried card can lock an entire fan, order of play matters far more than luck. Freeing an Ace early, opening a fan, and reading which suits are stuck all separate a win from a stall.
If you like La Belle Lucie, try its close cousin Trefoil Solitaire, which pre-plants the four Aces, or the looser Super Flower Garden Solitaire and the twin-foundation Alternative Solitaire.
If you run into anything odd or have an idea that would make the game better, please contact me.
Enjoy playing!
How to play La Belle Lucie Solitaire
Layout:
4 foundation piles: Empty at the start. Build up in suit from the Ace (Ace, 2, 3 … up to King).
18 fans (tableau): Seventeen fans of three cards plus one single card, all dealt face-up. Build down in suit — the only card that may go on the 8 of spades is the 7 of spades. Only the top card of each fan is playable. Empty fans stay empty; they are never refilled.
Stock: There is no ordinary stock. The permanently empty stock slot is the tap target for a redeal.
Foundation:
There are four foundation piles, one for each suit.
An Ace starts a foundation. A card can be added to a foundation pile only if it's one rank higher and the same suit as the pile's current top card, so the only card that fits on a 5 of hearts is a 6 of hearts. There can be no more than 13 cards in a pile.
The top card of each foundation can be moved back into play if another pile will accept it.
Tableau:
The tableau is dealt as fans of three cards, fanned out so every card shows. Only the exposed top card of a fan may be moved.
A card can be added to a fan only if it's one rank lower and the same suit as that fan's current top card, so the only card that fits on a 9 of clubs is an 8 of clubs.
Cards on the tableau that are not covered by another card are free to be played onto the foundation or onto another fan. Only one card may be moved at a time; sequences are not permitted. When a fan is emptied, its space stays empty for the rest of the deal.
Redeal:
When no more moves are possible, tap the stock slot to redeal. Every card still in the fans is gathered up, reshuffled, and dealt back out into fresh fans of three. La Belle Lucie allows this shuffled redeal twice, so use each one only when you have squeezed out every last move — those two reshuffles are your whole comeback.
