STRIPTEASE

Cards 52 Type Half-open packer Success rate Very low

Down

This unclassifiable game of my own invention is somewhat tantalizing, as the title may suggest. Although the odds seem to be against success in the form described below, it can nearly always be got out by slightly increasing the number of wastepiles. At time of writing I have not yet done it with fewer than five. But four is undoubtedly the proper number - if propriety can be said to come into it at all.

Layout: Put the four Queens in a row at the top of the board. Deal four cards face down in a row, overlapping the Queens. Deal the rest of the cards face up in successive overlapping rows of four until you finish with a tableau containing four columns of thirteen.
An initial deal. The grey areas are where your wastepiles go.
(Image courtesy of Goodsol)
Object: To strip the Queens of their covering cards.
Play: Take exposed cards one by one and use them to start and build four wastepiles. Each wastepile must be built in consecutive sequence, up and down ad lib and regardless of suit. For this purpose Kings are consecutive with both Jacks and Aces. (For example, part of a sequence might run -10-J-K-A-2-A-K- etc.)

Now for the tricky bit. Not one of the down-cards may be faced and taken until all four have been uncovered. If then you can't properly build them on one or more of the wastepiles the game has failed. Or you have failed. (Delete whichever does not apply.)

	© 1980-2012 by David Parlett
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