Football Solitaire

About Football Solitaire

Every board is football cards dealt into overlapping columns. Hidden groups connect them. Only the front card of each column can be moved.

Work out what the connections are — and what order to take the board apart in.

HOW IT PLAYS
Every group has one yellow card that names it, dealt into the columns and often buried under its own members. Dig it out, put it in an empty slot, and it says what it wants and how many are left. Drop the wrong card on it and it comes straight back, and it costs you a move.

Finish a group and its slot frees up. Harder boards have fewer slots than groups, so knowing the answer is not enough — which group you open first is the whole of it.

Stuck? Stack a card onto another of the same group, or park one on the substitutes' bench, and dig out what was underneath. Or play a joker: it opens a slot that any group can claim, and the first card you put on it decides which. Leave a board mid-way and it is waiting where you left it.

WHAT CONNECTS THEM
Manchester United legends. Clubs that have lifted the Champions League. Players who turned out for both Milan clubs. Grounds, managers, competitions, nations, and the vocabulary of the game itself.

300 LEVELS ACROSS 41 REGIONS
The squads playing right now, England and the Football League, Spain and the Iberian coast, the Italian provinces, the Bundesliga and the German cities, France and its ports, the Low Countries, Scotland and Ireland, Istanbul and Piraeus, Africa, the Nordics, the east, Asia, the Americas, the positions, the eras, the crossings, the dugout, the grounds, the trophy room, the Champions League, the World Cup, the legends, the almanac — and the masters, where everything is asked at once.

Every region ends with a final: thirty cards, six groups, four slots. Two groups are always waiting for a slot somebody else is standing in.

Only the front card of each column is face up. The rest turn over as you uncover them, so the board is something you take apart rather than read.

Difficulty does not climb by reaching for more obscure names. It climbs by asking harder questions — from "these play in the same league" to "these played for both of these clubs".

A DAILY CHALLENGE
One board a day, the same board for everyone, built from the date. One hint, one joker, one undo. Keep the streak going — and every week the daily plays by a different rule.

NO TIMERS, ANYWHERE
The challenge is knowledge and ordering, not reaction speed. Play Relaxed with no move limit at all, or Challenge if you want the budget to bite.

BUILT TO BE READ
Reduce motion, stronger contrast, and support for large text. Whether a card can be played is never signalled by colour alone.

PLAYS OFFLINE
Every level and every daily challenge is built on your phone rather than fetched from a server, so the whole game works with no connection.

OPTIONAL LEADERBOARD
The daily challenge has a leaderboard, and you can sign in to Google Play Games to appear on it. Signing in is optional — decline it and everything still works.

AN ALBUM TO FILL
Every player, club, ground, nation and competition in the game is a card — 1,119 of them. Cards carry a rating, a position and the colours of the club they are remembered at. Packs arrive as you are promoted, and you can buy more with the coins that clearing boards pays out. Cards you already have are sold back for coins automatically, so a pack is never worth nothing.

WHAT IS IN A PACK
Every pack holds five cards and at least one uncommon. Rare cards turn up in about one pack in four, legendary cards in about one in forty. The full odds are in the shop, before you buy anything.

ADS AND PURCHASES ARE BOTH OPTIONAL
There are no banners and nothing interrupts a board. The only ads are ones you choose to watch, offered when you have run out of hints, moves, undos or lives — and you can always say no. Coins and packs can be bought with real money, and every one of them can also be earned by playing. One purchase takes the video off those offers.