From The Complete Book of Solitaire & Patience Games, by Albert H. Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith.

Also known as: The Fan, Clover Leaf, Midnight Oil, and Alexander the Great.
Chance of winning: 1 in 10 games.

Layout. Deal the whole deck in seventeen fans (piles spread so that all cards are visible) of three cards each. The card left over forms a separate pile.

Foundations. Move the four aces, as they become available, to a row near you. Build these foundations up in suit to kings.

Play. On the tableau fans, build down in suit. One card at a time may be lifted from a fan to be put on a foundation or another fan. Spaces made by playing off a whole fan are not filled.

Redeals. Two redeals are allowed. After play has come to a standstill, gather all the cards not on the foundations, shuffle them, and deal again in fans of three. If one or two cards are left over, they make a separate fan.

Draw. After the last redeal, any one buried card may be drawn out of any one fan.

Tips. Once a build is made, it cannot be unmade except by play on a foundation. Therefore make no build until you have assured youself that (a) the cards below, thereby immolated, are not needed, or cannot be released anyhow; or (b) the build is sure to find eventual place on a foundation; or (c) burying the cards beyond recovery, to release others, is a worthwhile investment.

One way to begin, after the deal, is to note all the cards buried by kings. Since the cards next-lower in sequence to these buried cards cannot be moved, they can be built upon without further ado. For example, if the ten of spades is below a king, build on the nine of spades. Similarly, having immolated some cards by a build, proceed to build freely on the cards next-lower in suit.

The layout usually offers many choices of play. Canvass all possibilities before making a move. For example, suppose that the four, five, and six of clubs are available. If the five and four are built on the six, that fan is killed. If the four is first built on the five, that pile is killed, while the six can perhaps be moved later through clearing the seven. The choice of play will of course depend on whether the cards below the club five or below the club six are wanted more urgently.

Play on foundations at every opportunity, since if a card is playable on a foundation, it is of no use in the tableau.