the.com/solitaire
the only game you can win by being absolutely, gloriously alone
means A single-player card game (also called patience), or by extension a gem set by itself or a person who prefers their own company.
from From French solitaire, 'solitary, alone,' which descends from Latin solitarius, itself from solus, 'alone' — the same root that gives us 'sole,' 'solo,' and 'desolate.' The card game took the name because you play it by yourself; the diamond sense — a single stone in its own setting — followed the same logic of glorious aloneness.
- windows debut
- Added in 1990 to teach mouse dragging
- office plague
- Costs untold productivity in offices worldwide
- many names
- Called Patience across most of Europe
- unwinnable hands
- Roughly 20% of Klondike deals can't be won
- royal origins
- Linked to bored 18th-century French aristocrats
klondike — the most common solitaire variant, played with one 52-card deck since the 19th century
freecell — microsoft's solitaire game included in windows 95, solvable version with 32,000 numbered deals
spider solitaire — two-deck variant where you build descending sequences, also included in windows