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St. Helena (card game)

solitaire card game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ7588308
Source-derived summary

St. Helena (also known as Napoleon's Favourite or Washington's Favorite) is a patience or card solitaire game using two decks of playing cards shuffled together. Despite its name, it has no connection to the island with the same name, nor should it be confused with the better known Napoleon at St Helena, also called Forty Thieves in the US.

Rules

Explained here is the prevalent version. First, one king and one ace of each suit are removed and place in the middle of the table in two rows as shown. They are called the bases for the foundations. The kings form the upper foundations, while the aces form the lower foundations. Then, the rest of the cards are dealt clockwise into twelve piles starting with the upper left king. The table should now look like this:

The object is to build the upper foundations down by suit to the aces, and the lower foundations up by suit.

The top card of each pile surrounding the foundations is available for play onto another pile or on the foundations. Building on the piles is either up or down by suit.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “St. Helena (card game)” as solitaire card game. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 188-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Helena, card and game can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as solitaire card game. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7588308. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “St. Helena (card game)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow St. Helena (card game) primary sources, St. Helena (card game) archive and Helena research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from St. Helena (card game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.