Clock Solitaire

A round board of 19 holes, with jumps round the rim and along three lines through the centre.

Twelve holes sit round the rim, numbered like a clock face. Six more make an inner ring, numbered as on a 24-hour clock (13, 15 to 23), and 25 is the centre. Jump a marble over its neighbour into the empty hole behind it and remove the marble you jumped, as on any other board, but only along the lines engraved on the wood: round the rim, and along the three diameters from 1 to 7, 3 to 9 and 5 to 11. You cannot turn a corner, and an inner marble cannot jump its inner neighbour.

The goal is to finish with one marble, on the hole marked. The hole you empty and the hole you finish on must have the same colour in Bell's colouring, which depends on the hour: with 12 empty you can finish on 12, 3, 6, 9, 15 or 21; with the centre empty only the centre will do.

The six basic problems

• 1.1 Empty the centre (25) and finish on the centre.
• 1.2 Empty the North Pole (12) and finish there.
• 1.3 Empty 3, at one end of the equator, and finish there.
• 1.4 Empty 15, an inner hole on the equator, and finish there.
• 1.5 Empty the North Pole (12) and finish at the South Pole (6).
• 1.6 Empty 3 and finish at the other end of the equator, 9.

Where it comes from

The board is an old round brass plate with 19 shallow holes, found without instructions. John Beasley fixed the 42 permitted jumps, named the game Clock Solitaire and wrote the problems above, in his description of the game. George Bell analysed which problems can be solved in Clock Solitaire. We checked every problem and its route here ourselves.