Rules

Monte Carlo Solitaire is played with one deck of 52 cards.

Monte Carlo is a pair-matching solitaire game.

The game is set up by laying out 25 cards so that they form a 5x5 grid. The rest of the pack is set aside as the stock.

Cards that make up a pair (such as two Kings or two Sixes) are removed when they are immediately next to each other horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Once some or all such pairs have been removed, the cards are consolidated, i.e. moving cards to the left as if towards the upper left corner to fill any gaps left behind by the discarded pairs. New cards are then laid out from the stock to form a fresh layout of 25 cards.

This process is repeated until it is no longer possible to remove pairs (e.g. in the finishing stages of the game one might be stuck with “4-6-4-6.”). The game is out if all cards are successfully discarded.

Although luck is a large part of Monte Carlo, strategy can sometimes play a role. For example, one could leave a pair alone to be used to aid freeing a separated pair.

Menu

You can control the game through the menu with the following commands:

• New Game - reshuffle the decks and start a new play.
• Hint - provide an on-screen hint for all valid moves. The cards that can be discarded are outlined in green.
• Explain - show and explain all possible moves.
• Undo - undo, one at a time, your moves.
• Settings - configure different options the way you like it.
• Scoreboard - we record the number of times you have this solitaire converged. You can get to the Game Center Leaderboard to compare your score to other players.
• How To Play - see the documentation.
• About - brief information about this app, including the links to our website and our Facebook page.

Gestures

You can control the game with the following gestures:

• Tap a card on the table to discard it and the matching card if they are adjacent.
• Drag a card onto its pair to discard them both.
• Swipe left - undo your previous move.
• Swipe right - show Hint.
• Swipe down - show and explain all possible moves.
• Swipe up - bring up the Settings view.