Road Trip Solitaire

I was messing around with a deck of cards as I was waiting to pick my wife up from work and made this solitaire game played entirely in-hand. It's quite different from Loot the Loop which I found out about afterwards. Shout out to Mike Berg and Laszlo Korossy for helping me hone this one.

Set-Up

Remove the Jokers from a standard deck and shuffle the remaining cards. Hold the deck face-up in one hand, placing a joker on the back of the deck to show the end. Fan out the top seven cards of the deck. You may always look further down, but you can only manipulate the top seven cards.

How to Play 

The goal is to sort out the top seven cards in ascending order as efficiently as possible. Aces are low, Faces are high, suit does not matter. Each "turn", choose one card to discard, tucking it face-up behind the Joker. If the card has a number, you will then choose another card to move forward or backward in the deck by that many cards. Discarded Jacks, Queens, and Kings act as ones, twos, or threes respectively. You must move the card exactly that many times. Once you discard a card, the former eighth card counts as part of your hand, and you can choose to move it. If two or more cards showing the same number are adjacent, they can be merged into a stack. A stack is counted and moved like a single card. A stack can be unmerged before you take a turn Once at least the top seven cards are organized from lowest to highest, you may score the full organized set (including cards beyond the top seven) by tucking them face-down behind the Joker.

End of the Game

When you have less than seven cards remaining, you may score all remaining cards once they are organized. If you cannot make any moves, the game ends. To count your score, flip the whole deck over and count the face-up cards. If you get a score of 25 or higher, you win. A score of 30 or higher is exceptional.