Solitaire Terms Explained: Tableau, Stock, Foundation & More

Solitaire's vocabulary is older than the light bulb, and it shows. The words come from 19th-century Patience books, French borrowings, and a few coinages from the computer era, all layered on top of each other — which is why three different games can use three different words for the same pile of cards. This article walks through the vocabulary the way you meet it in an actual game: the table, the supply, the goal, and the moves.

If you want quick, alphabetical definitions instead of a guided tour, our glossary covers every term on this page and more. Think of this article as the map and the glossary as the index.

The table: tableau, columns, and piles

Every solitaire begins by dealing cards into a working area, and that area is the tableau — French for "picture" or "scene," a leftover from the era when Patience layouts were admired as much as played. The tableau is where the actual game happens: it is the only place you can rearrange cards freely.

The tableau is divided into vertical stacks. Most rulebooks call each one a column; FreeCell tradition prefers cascade, because the cards are spread downward so every card "spills" into view. The two words mean the same thing. Spider deals ten columns, Klondike seven, FreeCell eight cascades — but structurally they are one idea.

The generic word for any stack of cards anywhere on the table is a pile. When a rule says "the top card of each pile is available," it means the exposed card you can actually touch. Columns, foundations, and the waste are all piles in this loose sense — which is exactly why the more precise words exist.

The supply: stock, talon, and waste

Few solitaires deal the whole deck to the tableau at once. The undealt remainder is the stock — your supply line. In Klondike you turn cards from the stock one or three at a time; in Spider, clicking the stock deals ten cards at once, one onto every column, which is why Spider players treat each stock deal as a small earthquake to prepare for.

Cards turned up from the stock that you cannot (or choose not to) play land in the waste — sometimes called the discard pile, though nothing is truly discarded, since the top waste card is always playable. Then there is talon, the troublemaker of the family: older books use it for the stock, newer ones for the waste, and some software for either. The word is French for "heel" — the leftover heel of the deck after dealing. When you see "talon," check which pile the writer actually means; when you write about the game yourself, "stock" and "waste" are the unambiguous pair.

The goal: foundations, runs, and building

Most solitaires are won by moving every card to the foundations — the piles, usually starting from the Aces, that you build up by suit until every King is home. Klondike and FreeCell both work this way: four foundations, Ace to King, game over when all 52 cards arrive.

Spider is the great exception. It has no foundations at all. Instead you assemble each suit directly in the tableau as a run — a complete King-through-Ace sequence in a single suit — and the game removes each finished run automatically. Eight runs, and the table is clear.

Two nearby words carry precise meanings. A sequence is any set of cards in consecutive rank order, whatever the suits — a red 8 on a black 9 on a red 10 is a sequence, but in Spider it is not a movable run, because runs demand one suit. And building is the verb for extending a pile according to its rule: you build down in the tableau and up on the foundations. Klondike adds a wrinkle — tableau building must alternate colors, red on black on red.

Moving: supermoves, free cells, and reserves

FreeCell contributed the newest layer of vocabulary. A free cell is one of the four empty slots that can hold any single card temporarily — the game's namesake, and the entire engine of its strategy. The general term for any holding area of this kind, in FreeCell or older games, is the reserve.

Strictly, FreeCell only lets you move one card at a time. But if you have free cells and empty cascades available, moving a sequence card-by-card through them is legal and merely tedious — so software performs the whole shuffle for you in one drag. That convenience is a supermove, and its size is limited by your empty space: free cells plus empty cascades determine how long a sequence you can move at once. Spider has no supermoves because it never needs them — same-suit runs simply move as a unit by rule.

The language of rank and suit

A card's rank is its number or face value — Ace through King — and its suit is its family: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. Solitaire rules are written almost entirely in these two words. "Build down by rank regardless of suit" is Spider's placement rule. "Down by rank in alternating colors" is Klondike's and FreeCell's. "Up by rank in suit" is every foundation ever. Once you read rules this way, a new solitaire variant takes about thirty seconds to learn.

Same table, different dialects

Part of the confusion is that each game community kept its own dialect. FreeCell players say cascade; Spider and Klondike players say column. Klondike's stock cycles through a waste pile and may allow multiple passes; Spider's stock deals directly onto the tableau and there is no waste at all; FreeCell has no stock whatsoever — all 52 cards are dealt face up on move one. And "talon" floats between stock and waste depending on the century of the book you are reading. None of these are different concepts; they are different histories.

Terms most often confused

• Stock vs waste — the stock is face-down supply you have not drawn; the waste is face-up cards already drawn and awaiting play. Cards flow one way: stock to waste.
• Run vs sequence — every run is a sequence, but only a same-suit sequence is a run. In Spider the difference decides what you can pick up and move.
• Foundation vs tableau — the foundation is the destination, built up by suit; the tableau is the workspace, built down. Beginners sometimes bury a card in the tableau that the foundation was waiting for.
• Column vs cascade — identical structures; "cascade" is simply FreeCell's word for a tableau column.
• Free cell vs reserve — a free cell is FreeCell's specific one-card slot; a reserve is the general term for any temporary holding area.

That is the whole working vocabulary — perhaps twenty words, most of them older than your great-grandparents. Keep the glossary open the first few times a rulebook throws one at you, then put the words to work: deal a hand of Spider, a quick Klondike, or an all-cards-up game of FreeCell, and the terms stop being vocabulary and start being the game.