🌹 La Belle Lucie
🂡 Cards · 3 playsLa Belle Lucie
Eighteen fans, two redeals and one sneaky merci. Get all 52 home.
About La Belle Lucie
The pretty French fan solitaire with a ruthless streak. The deck is dealt into 18 fans of three (the last one gets a single card), and only the top card of each fan can move. Build the foundations up by suit from Ace to King, build down by suit on the fans, and remember that an emptied fan stays empty for good. When the moves dry up you get two redeals — every card not yet home is shuffled into fresh fans of three — and after the last one, a single merci lets you pull any buried card to the top of its fan. One point per card home; a win is worth 52, plus 10 for each redeal you never used and 5 for an unused merci.
How to Play
Only the top card of each fan can move. Build foundations up by suit, Ace to King. Build fans down by suit (♠7 onto ♠8). Empty fans stay empty — nothing can go there. Stuck? Use one of 2 redeals ♻, then one merci 💝 to pull up a buried card. Score: 1 per card home; a win is 52 + 10 per unused redeal + 5 for an unused merci.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Read every fan before you move. Empty fans stay empty and fans build down only in suit, so the real danger is a card stuck above a lower card of its own suit — say the ♥4 lying on the ♥6 with the ♥5 underneath. The 4 can't reach the 5 beneath it, so that fan is frozen until the foundation climbs to the ♥3 or a redeal breaks it up. Spot these early and play toward them.
Get Aces and 2s home fast, and be wary of long same-suit stacks on the fans: piling ♠9-8-7 onto the ♠10 looks tidy, but it buries whatever lies beneath the 10. Prefer moves that uncover a new card over moves that just shuffle the tops, and use undo to test a line before you commit.
Don't rush the redeals. Squeeze every move out of the current layout first — each redeal you never use is worth 10 points, and a redeal only reshuffles what's left. Save the merci for the end, when one buried card is all that stands between you and a run of foundation plays.