How to Play Impossible, a Form of Solitaire

Impossible is a form of solitaire and a variant of Call Eleven I created on a three-hour layover in Texas about ten years ago. It takes a lot of time, and it's not easy to win, hence the name.

Impossible is played with a standard playing card deck-52 cards, plus the two Jokers. You begin with ten points, and start by laying nine cards down face up in rows of three.

As you deal, cover any face cards (Jack, Queen or King) with another card from the top of the deck and continue to do so until there are no face cards visible, just number cards, aces, and/or Jokers. The rest of the deck will remain face down in your hands at all times.

The object of the game is to wind up with all of the cards back in your deck before you either run out of cards in your deck or lose all of your points.

Now, out of the nine piles, for any two cards that add up to eleven, cover each with a card from the remaining deck. No face cards should be visible at any point in the game, so if you cover one of the nine cards with a face card, continue to draw until it is covered with a number card, an ace, or a Joker.

For example, say the top card in the first pile is a 3 and the top card in the fourth pile is an 8. Draw a card to cover the 3. If that card is for instance, a Jack, place the Jack on top of the 3 and draw another card to cover the Jack. If the next card is a Queen, place it on the Jack. Keep going until you draw a number card, ace, or Joker, to place over the last visible face card. Then draw a card to cover the 8.

Keep drawing cards to cover every two card combination of eleven that arises. Aces count as one. Jokers are wild: they can be any number you want them to be.

When one of your nine piles contains eleven cards, pick it up, add it to your deck, and shuffle. Each time you do this, you gain one point. Any time your score totals fifteen, you can remove any one pile from the board whether or not it contains eleven cards.

If any pile contains more than eleven cards, you lose a point for every card in excess of eleven. This generally occurs when you are covering a pile containing ten cards and you draw a face card to cover it.

You are however not obligated to pick up a pile once it totals eleven cards or more; you may want to deliberately cover a pile with more than eleven cards if your deck is running low, and your other piles contain relatively few cards.

If there is no card combination totaling eleven available, draw the top card from your deck to create a new pile. For every pile you create beyond the original nine, you will lose one point.

You win the game if all of the piles are returned to your deck. You lose if you run out of points, or if you run out of cards in your deck and cannot pick up any piles.