Darn It!

This solitaire card game appeared in the January 1993 issue of The Rainbow. It was inspired by a solitaire game from a PC at college that I somewhat remembered the rules of play.

In Darn It, six columns of six cards each are displayed face up in the upper portion of the screen. The rest of the deck ( 16 cards) are placed face down in the lower-left area, and the top card of this deck is turned face up on the right. This latter card is the “play'' pile. 

The object of Darn It is to move all the cards from the top portion of the screen to the play pile. Legal moves are chose in which the card to be played has a value exactly one higher or lower than the value of the face-up card at the top of the play pile. The suit of the cards is irrelevant. The card values go from Ace (low) to King (high).  Use the left and right arrow keys to select a column and the up arrow to play the card from that column. When none of the bottom cards in the column can be played, turn the next card on the deck face up on the play pile with the down arrow key. The number of cards remaining in the deck is indicated on the back of the deck. When the deck i empty and no legal move are left, the game is over. 

You can go back in the game using the “OOPS” key (“O”) to undo moves. You can go all the way back to the beginning and try a new strategy. 

The version here is slightly revised with home help text and more rules options. When you start the game, it asks you monitor type, enable value wrap around,  and enable the no play on king rule. Wrap around means you can place a ace on a king and vice versa. If the no play on king rule is enabled, you cannot play any card on a king and you must draw from the deck.

Also includes an alternate version that runs in a 4k MC-10 or the Coco 1 and 2.