About SolitaireStack.com

SolitaireStack.com exists to be the clearest, most trustworthy solitaire reference on the open web. Roughly one hundred million people sit down to a solitaire game every month, and most of the writing they find about those games is thin: scraped rules, copy-paste histories, strategy advice written by people who have not tested it at the table. We think solitaire players deserve better than that, and the bar we hold ourselves to is simple — be the best solitaire content network on the web, full stop.

Concretely, that means covering every serious variant with canonical rules we have actually implemented, strategy grounded in simulation and real play, history traced to primary sources where they exist, and numbers we have run ourselves. When we cannot verify a claim, we say so. When we are wrong, we correct the record in public. Our job is to save a curious player from reading ten surface-level pages to learn what one careful page should have told them.

The network is organized as a hub at SolitaireStack.com plus a set of spoke domains that cover individual games in depth: FreeCell, Klondike, and Spider each have their own home. The hub handles cross-game reference material — comparison pages, history, taxonomy, rules glossary, and the editorial infrastructure you are reading right now. The spokes handle the everyday tools players need: deal numbers, solvers, daily challenges, statistics. Wherever you land, the editorial standards are the same.

We started SolitaireStack.com because the open web was full of solitaire content that did not respect the reader. Rule pages copied verbatim from Wikipedia. Strategy articles that said nothing more useful than “plan ahead.” History pieces that repeated the Napoleon-on-St-Helena legend as fact without ever naming a source. Thousands of near-identical “how to play solitaire” pages, each one stuffed with ads and each one telling a beginner roughly the same four paragraphs.

The founding idea was to build a branded editorial operation around solitaire the way a good trade publication is built around any other specialty. That meant naming specialty desks, writing a house style guide, documenting our research and correction processes, and publishing a masthead so readers knew who was behind each page. It also meant being selective: we publish fewer pages than an SEO farm, and we update them on a rolling schedule so they stay accurate as games, rules, and player understanding evolve.

The network launched as a small collection of FreeCell pages and has grown into a hub at SolitaireStack.com plus a family of spoke domains covering FreeCell, Klondike, and Spider. The editorial model, however, has stayed the same from day one.

We organize our writing around five desks, each with its own beat, its own voice, and its own contact address. Every article on the network is published under one of these desks, and every article goes through our shared editorial standards before it reaches a reader.

• The Editorial Team is the masthead. We set the house style, commission pieces, coordinate between desks, fact-check, and run the rolling update schedule. See our Editorial Team profile.
• The Strategy Desk covers tactics, decision-making, and probability: opening theory, move-ordering, supermove math, endgame technique. See the Strategy Desk profile.
• The History Desk covers origins, variants, the patience tradition, and the Microsoft era. We cite primary sources where available and flag disputed claims. See the History Desk profile.
• The Rules Desk owns canonical rules for every variant we cover, writes the how-to pages, and tests teaching materials on real beginners. See the Rules Desk profile.
• The Research Desk runs simulations, builds solvers, and publishes win-rate and solvability numbers with methodology disclosed. See the Research Desk profile.

Every page on the network carries a byline identifying which desk wrote it, the publication date, and the most recent update date. You can browse every desk profile on our authors directory.

Every article on the network moves through a six-stage pipeline before it is published, and it re-enters that pipeline whenever something changes in the game, the research, or the rules.

1. Research. The assigning desk gathers primary and secondary sources: rulebooks, historical archives, simulation data, academic papers, reference implementations. We keep a source list per article.
2. Draft. The desk writer produces a first draft. Claims are cited inline. Uncertainty is explicit. If we do not know, we say we do not know.
3. Fact-check. A different pair of eyes verifies every factual claim against its source. Numbers are re-derived. Rule claims are tested against the game engine. History claims are traced to their citation.
4. Desk review. A senior editor on the owning desk signs off on accuracy, coverage, and tone. Strategy pieces get a second strategy review. Rules pieces get tested on a new player.
5. Publish. The article goes live with author byline, publication date, and canonical URL. The page enters our rolling update calendar.
6. Update. We revisit articles on a scheduled cadence and whenever something material changes. Updates are marked with a visible updated date.

For the full process, including how we handle AI tooling and sourcing disputes, see our editorial standards and our fact-checking policy.

Our editorial standards cover independence, sourcing, evidence, AI usage, updates, disclosure, and voice. They are written down and public. If you ever want to know whether a page on the network should have been written the way it was, the standards page is where to check.

The short version: we write what we believe is best for players (not for advertisers), we cite sources, we back numerical claims with simulation, we use AI tools to accelerate research but never to publish unreviewed, and we correct errors in public. See the full editorial standards policy for the complete text.

Part of building a trustworthy reference is being explicit about what we will not publish.

• No AI-generated, unedited content. We use AI tools to speed up research and drafting, but every article is reviewed, rewritten, and signed off by a human editor on the assigning desk. AI does not publish here.
• No sponsored “content.” We do not accept paid placements disguised as editorial. If we ever run a sponsored unit, it will be labelled plainly and kept separate from the editorial flow.
• No regurgitated Wikipedia copy. Wikipedia is a starting point, not a source. Every history or rules claim is traced to a primary source or flagged as disputed.
• No thin SEO farm pages. We do not publish near-identical pages to chase long-tail keywords. If two topics belong in one page, they live in one page.

Each desk keeps its own inbox. Strategy questions go to the Strategy Desk, rule disputes go to the Rules Desk, historical citations go to the History Desk, and numerical or methodology questions go to the Research Desk. For everything else, write to the Editorial Team. See the full contact directory for desk-by-desk email addresses and response-time expectations.