A full guide to the solitaire: a 28-card layout, pairs adding up to thirteen, removing the king on its own, drawing from the stock and scoring on muta.pro.
Pyramid is a single-player solitaire of arithmetic and foresight. The goal is to completely clear the pyramid of 28 cards, removing them in pairs whose sum equals 13. The fewer draws from the stock and the faster you clear the layout, the higher your final score. If no moves remain while cards are still on the table, it is a dead end and the game is not solved.
28 cards are laid out as a pyramid of seven rows: one card at the top, two beneath it, and so on down to seven at the base. The cards partly overlap, so only the card that nothing covers from below is face up and available. The remaining 24 cards form the stock. Values count like this: ace = 1, face cards — jack 11, queen 12, king 13, the rest at their pip value.
Remove two face-up cards if their values add up to 13: for example, a queen and an ace, a jack and a two, a ten and a three, a nine and a four.
The king is worth exactly 13, so it is removed on its own, without a pair — just click on it.
You may pair only free cards of the pyramid and the top card of the waste. Covered cards must be freed first.
If no pairs form on the table, draw a card from the stock into the waste. Its top card can also be used in a pair.
When the stock runs out, it can be reshuffled, but this adds a penalty to your score — spare your draws.
Remove all 28 cards of the pyramid — the game is solved. If there are no moves left and cards remain, it is a dead end.
Each removed pair making 13 earns +20 points, each removed king — +15. A redeal of the stock costs −10 points. If the pyramid is fully cleared, a speed bonus is added: the faster the game is solved, the bigger it is. The game keeps stats on games, wins, best score and best time, and records go into a leaderboard — there is something to strive for.
Don't grab the first pair you see. Work out which cards will be freed next, and which of them are "hanging" without a partner.
Aces, twos and threes are needed for various pairs. Don't spend them too early if that leaves you at a dead end.
Every redeal of the stock penalizes the score. Try to clear as much as possible on the first pass through the deck.
If you're stuck on a choice, highlighting a possible move helps you not miss an obvious pair.
Pyramid seems random, but most deals have a winning line — you just mustn't destroy it with your very first move. The key is that each card of the pyramid covers two below it, so what matters is not "which pair to remove now" but "which card you need to free to reach the blocked one".
Before removing a pair, look at which two cards it will reveal below. A good move is one that leads to the next move, not one that simply clears cards off the table.
13 can be made in only five ways before the face cards: A+Q, 2+J, 3+10, 4+9, 5+8, 6+7. If there are three sevens on the table and only one six, two sevens will "hang" without a partner — plan so that a matching value is left for every dangerous card.
A king = 13 and goes alone, so it never blocks the value count. Remove it as soon as it appears — it clears two lower rows for free.
The king leaves on its own; the other cards are removed only in pairs summing to 13.
Pyramid is lost not on the table but in the stock: there are 24 cards there, and an extra redeal hurts the score. The task is to squeeze the most pairs out of each pass, not to flip through the stock in vain.
The face-up waste card is a partner for the table. Before drawing a new one, check: does the current top form a pair with a face-up card of the pyramid?
Every draw from the stock buries the previous waste card under a new one. First use everything already open on the table, and only then flip the stock.
The first pass almost never clears the pyramid to the end. Treat it as reconnaissance: note where you got stuck so that on the second pass you remove exactly those cards.
A card from the closed stock lands face up in the waste — its top can also be taken into a pair.
Behind "Pyramid" hides a whole family of solitaires with the same sum-of-13 mechanic but differing strictness of rules. Knowing them makes it easier to understand why some deals have a higher chance of winning.
The classic lets you reshuffle the stock once, twice or three times with a penalty; the tough variant gives only one pass through the stock with no redeals — there every move counts, and the share of solvable deals is noticeably lower.
In the softened version a card can be removed even if a card lying beside it partly covers it — only a fully covered card is blocked. The number of playable deals grows.
"Thirteen", "Joker Pyramid" and layouts targeting 10 or 11 are the same pairs by a fixed sum; only the shape of the layout and the target number change. Master counting to 13 and you can play them all.
Jack+two and ten+three both make 13; the choice between them is the tactics.
Most losses are not bad luck but haste. Here are the moves that most often drive a layout into a dead end.