Crescent is a solitaire card game played with two decks of playing cards mixed
together. The game is so called because when the cards are dealt properly, the resulting piles should form
a large arc or a crescent.
First, one king and one ace of each suit are removed to form the bases for the foundations. The kings
are placed on a row, while the aces are placed below the kings. The ninety-six remaining cards are dealt
into 16 piles of six cards each, faced down. If the player chooses, the piles should form a large arc, as
mentioned above. After the cards are dealt, the top card of each pile is turned face up.
The object is to move all the cards from the semicircle tableau to the foundations. The kings are built
down by suit up to aces and the aces are built up, also by suit, to kings.
The top card of each pile in the semicircle are available to play on the foundations or around the
tableau. Only one card can be moved at a time and building on the tableau is either up or down by suit and
can go round-the-corner (placing a king over an ace and vice versa). Once a face-down card becomes exposed,
it is turned face up. Spaces are not filled.
When the king and ace foundations are in sequence, one can transfer the cards from one foundation to the
other except the base cards.
When all possible moves have been made—or the player has made all moves he wanted to make—a special
redeal move is made. The bottom card of each pile on the semicircle is placed on the top without disturbing
the order of the other cards in the pile. This can only be done three times in the entire game.
The game is won when all 104 cards end up in the foundations.
As a suggestion, the player can also just deal the 16 piles in any arrangement as a semicircle can
possibly be a space waster, especially when the game is played with regular-sized playing cards. Either
way, the game stays the same.
There are many keys you can use to make your game playing more efficient:
- Space
- Auto-finish—In foundation games, this moves all the cards it can up to the foundations
- z
- Undo
- x
- Redo
- n
- New Game
- g
- Replay the same game
- f
- Flip a card from the stock
There is also a card-finder keyboard feature you can use to help you locate cards:
- a
- Highlight the aces
- 1 though 9
- Highlight the cards with the rank pressed
- 0 or t
- Highlight the tens
- d, c, h, s
- Highlight the cards with the suit
- r, b
- Highlight the red or black cards
You may combine the rank keys with the suit or color keys. For example, if you hold down the "5" key and
the "d" key then only the 5 of diamonds will be highlighted. "a" and "r" will highlight the red aces.
There are ways to use the mouse to make your game playing more efficient:
- Left Click
- Move the card to the most logical place (might not be the best move, however)
- Left Click in Empty Area
- Auto-finish—In foundation games, this moves all the cards it can up to the foundations
- Right Click
- Undo
You can use super moves to make your game playing more efficient.
Clicking or dragging a card that isn't immediately accessible will attempt to move all the cards
above it in its stack until the move is valid. The effect will be the same as clicking each card. If you
cancel the drag or undo the move, all the cards will go back to where they were.
Dragging a card or cards to the middle of a stack will attempt to move all the cards above the
destination out of the way. The effect is the same as clicking each card. To see where the cards will
move, hold the dragged card(s) at the destination for a second. If you decide to move the dragged
card(s) somewhere else, just drag them there and the other cards will go back to where they
were. Undoing the move will also move the cards back.
If you drag a card or cards to the middle of a stack and the cards that move away would be valid to
move back on top of the dragged card(s), then they'll slide out of the way and let you just slip the
card(s) in.