Talk:Canfield (solitaire)

Name confusion
There is talk about Klondike but this is article about Canfield. WTF? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.232.37.69 (talk) 17:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Klondike is often called Canfield, though the name properly belongs to the game described in this article. Kostaki mou (talk) 01:53, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 12 August 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus and there has been no further discussion since the last relist. (closed by non-admin page mover) Brad  v  15:57, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Canfield (solitaire) → Demon (solitaire) – Calling this game Canfield is very confusing as it is also the traditional English name for the very popular game of Klondike (solitaire). On the other hand, "Demon" is the traditional name for this game (even the category is called Demon solitaire card games) as per card expert, Parlett's The History of Card Games, so this move would resolve that confusion. Canfield (solitaire) could then become a dab page pointing to both. Bermicourt (talk) 21:14, 12 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me &#124; my contributions 15:49, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose – every video game I have ever seen calls this solitaire game "Canfield", which is enough to convince me that that is the WP:COMMONNAME. This is likely an WP:ENGVAR issue, but use of the names "Canfield" and "Klondike" appears to be more widespread. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:33, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Comments
 * Not sure video games are considered reliable sources. And they pick their game names for marketing reasons.
 * This is an issue of clarity not WP:ENGVAR. We have 2 games - Klondike/Canfield and Canfield/Demon - in the order US name/British name. I am not proposing to move both games to one ENGVAR or the other. I am proposing to use the 2 unique names to avoid confusion in either North America or the Rest of the World i.e. Klondike and Demon. Canfield, which is used for both and thus highly confusing, can then be a dab page and an alternative name in the lede of each article. I hope that helps. Bermicourt (talk) 18:36, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * And I'm saying that "Klondike" and "Canfield", respectively, are the (international) WP:COMMONNAMEs, and moving this one will lead to potentially more confusion, not less. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 05:30, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Definitely NOT international. The game is called Demon outside of North America. Even American card game authors acknowledge that. Bermicourt (talk) 07:19, 16 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Article violates WP policies regarding sourcing
Most material in various sections is unattributed to any published source. This is not a trustworthy article, and is not encyclopedic by WP's own standards. 67.184.62.39 (talk) 14:47, 16 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Crack on and improve it then! Bermicourt (talk) 06:35, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Myth about Canfield being invented by Richard Canfield
The story that Canfield "invented" this game at his casino has become a common myth on the Internet and even in some modern card game books by authors who should know better. The truth is that rules for the game called Canfield in the US and Demon elsewhere were published by "Devonia" in 1891, probably the prolific English authoress Mary Whitmore Jones, who published the same article in her 1892 compendium. So the rules were public three years before Canfield took over his casino. This may explain why it is still called Demon in the UK and elsewhere and why Canfield cannot have invented it, although he certainly raised its profile. I've made an initial update to the article to correct this.

Actually we can't even be sure that the game Canfield 'promoted' at his gambling den, was this one. Michael Keller makes a good case here, which suggests that the game offered by Canfield was actually the one called Klondike. Since the Klondike gold rush occurred in 1896-99, it would be logical for his money-spinning game with cards to be named after it. To lend weight to Keller's theory, the first rules for Klondike appear in 1909; this fits with Canfield's ownership of the casino; he relinquished it in 1911. We know that Klondike is often called Canfield and this would explain why - the most famous casino in America was uniquely offering it as a gambling game and that casino was Canfield. Klondike survived both as a game and a name, but perhaps in the ensuing confusion, the name Canfield became inadvertently attached, in America at least, to the unsuspecting game of Demon because of a vague resemblance in its mode of play. This would not be the first time that sloppy card game book authors fail to check their facts. Leoni's Own and Weaver's are also often confused by those who don't do their research - I've just had to change that article too.

As a result of the abject confusion, card game experts Michael Keller (US) and Parlett (UK) recommend that English language sources drop the name Canfield entirely and call both games by their original names - Klondike and Demon. Bermicourt (talk) 19:40, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

waste pile !?!?!?!
from where does the waste pile come from?It seems to me it comes from the reserve,however i only figured this out through much head scratching and moping about with nothing better to do ; granted though I have barely reached adolescence and do not have the cognitive ability of most adults. It seems very confusing and as I don’t know myself I cannot edit the article. Solitaire addict jabberwocky (talk) 09:55, 2 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I've just amended the description to make it, hopefully, clearer. Once the layout is set up, the cards left in your hand are dealt, three at a time and face up, to form the waste pile. If the top card is playable to the tableau or foundations, it may be moved. Then the card below it becomes available and so on. If the top card of the waste pile is not playable, another packet of three cards are dealt to it from the hand. HTH. Bermicourt (talk) 19:44, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Differences from the game as I was taught it
As a child, I was taught this game, as Demon. As I was taught it, the reserve cards are used only to fill spaces in the tableau, and remain face down until used as such.

"Cards may be moved between tableau piles either individually or as a complete sequence, provided the entire column is moved." This final point has never been part of the game as I was taught it.

Furthermore, the article doesn't comment on straight 3 versus reverse 3 as the way of dealing from the stock. Reverse 3 is the way I was taught.

That said, there's also a two-pack version, in which the tableau is of eight depots and the reserve pile has 40 cards, face up and still squared. Here, the top card of the reserve can be played to the tableau or foundations as well as being used to fill spaces. — Smjg (talk) 00:18, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * As the article says it was called Demon when it was invented in England and it has been called Demon in Britain ever since. It was initially called Demon in America, but as a result of it being used at a gambling den the name was accidentally or consciously changed there to Canfield (there is confusion over exactly what happened). So the article title is the American name for a British game.
 * As to the rules, they are uncited and probably come from an American computer programme. However, card game researcher David Parlett's rules are pretty much the same, so I have tweaked them and added a ref. The rules you were taught may well be a variant; if so and you can find a suitable source, it can be added to the article.
 * Several early sources describe Demon with a double pack, the most recent being Phillips (1939). Again, there's no reason this can't be added to the article.
 * Can you explain the difference between "straight 3" and "reverse 3"? I don't recall coming across them in the literature. Bermicourt (talk) 08:08, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Hmm. This seems to go against both WP:TIES and WP:COMMONALITY.  Though maybe it isn't a strong national tie.
 * Puzzlingly, a book (I think British) I had out of the library many years ago stated something like "Canfield is probably the only patience to have started off as a gambling game" - mixing US and UK terminology in a single sentence! What you're saying suggests that this is nonsense and actually Richard Canfield took the British game and turned it into a gambling game.  That said, even more puzzling is that another book I had out of the library (American) gave "Demon Patience" as another name for Klondike!  I think the name Fascination has also been applied to both games.
 * Straight 3 means turning over a whole stack of three cards at once, such that the cards remain in the same order. Reverse 3 means pulling the cards from the pack in such a way that the order of the three cards is reversed between successive passes through the pack. — Smjg (talk) 13:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That story about the origin of Canfield is typical of the popular myths associated with certain games and, once they take hold, they are hard to eradicate. Game book authors are notorious for copying from one another and not checking their facts. It saves time; moreover a nice fable may be more attractive than the truth. In this case, I've cited all the key historical facts having checked them on Google Books or against the original book in my library. The unsolved mystery is: exactly which patience/solitaire games did Richard Canfield offer in his casino and what did he call them? Because there is a naming confusion between Canfield and Klondike. What is certain is that the game described here as Canfield is the same Demon Patience described by "Devonia" in 1891. You will see that she implies that cards are turned from stock in straight 3s. This is 3 years before Canfield took over the casino and at least a decade before he seems to have used this or Klondike (or both) as a gambling game.Bermicourt (talk) 15:19, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
 * PS Take a look at Michael Keller's interesting piece about the unsolved mystery which is linked from the article...Bermicourt (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2022 (UTC)