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Klondike is the best-known form of solitaire to the point of being a synecdoche. It is a staple of computer operating systems, here shown as KPatience on the KDE desktop environment.

Solitaire, also called Patience, often refers to single-player card games involving a layout of cards with a goal of sorting them in some manner. However it is possible to play the same games competitively (often a head to head race) and cooperatively. The term solitaire is also used for single-player games of concentration and skill using a set layout of tiles, pegs or stones rather than cards. These games include Peg solitaire and Shanghai solitaire.

These games typically involve dealing cards from a shuffled deck into a prescribed arrangement on a tabletop, from which the player attempts to reorder the deck by suit and rank through a series of moves transferring cards from one place to another under prescribed restrictions. Some games allow for the reshuffling of the deck(s), and/or the placement of cards into new or "empty" locations.

There are many different solitaire games, but the term "solitaire" is often used to refer specifically to the most well-known form, called "Klondike". Klondike and some other solitaire games have been adapted into two-player competitive games. See List of solitaire card games for more.

There is a vast array of variations on the solitaire/patience theme, using either one or more decks of cards, with rules of varying complexity and skill levels. Many of these have been converted to electronic form and are available as computer games. Basic forms of Klondike solitaire and FreeCell come with every current installation of Microsoft Windows. Many software solitaire collections can be downloaded from the internet at no charge.

History

Like the origin of playing cards, the origin of patience is uncertain. The game is most likely German or Scandinavian in origin. The game became popular in France in the early 19th Century reaching England and America in the latter half. Patience was first mentioned in literature shortly after cartomantic layouts were developed circa 1765. The earliest known recording of a game of patience occurred in 1783 in the German game anthology Das neue Königliche L'Hombre-Spiel. Before this, there were no literary mentions of such games in large game compendiums such as Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester (1674) and Abbé Bellecour's Academie des Jeux (1674).

There is an old tradition in the German or Scandinavian countries to use "patience" as a guide to what the near future has to offer, a kind of "luck" meter. This belief assumes that a person’s "luck" will vary from time to time and important matters should not be initiated or conducted when the cards are not favorable. If there are no winnings in the game for a number of tries it spells caution in what you do. If a win at the first try times are good and “luck” smiles at you, thus the immediate future can be used for important decisions. Timing the game is a further indicator of the strength of the outcome.

Napoleon was said to have "played patience" during his exile; however from written accounts, he played Vingt-Un, Piquet, and Whist but not Patience. The story is thought to have arisen from a misinterpretation. Nonetheless, many solitaire games were named after him, such as Napoleon at St. Helena, Napoleon's Square, etc.

The first collection of solitaire card games in the English language is attributed to Lady Adelaide Cadogan through her Illustrated Games of Patience, published in about 1870 and reprinted several times. Other collections quickly followed such as Patience by E. D. Cheney (1869), Amusement for Invalids by Annie B. Henshaw (1870), and later Dick's Games of Patience, published by Dick and Fitzgerald. Other books about solitaire written towards the end of the 19th century were by H. E. Jones (a.k.a. Cavendish), Angelo Lewis (a.k.a. Professor Hoffman), Basil Dalton, Ernest Bergholt, and Mary Whitmore Jones.

See also

• List of solitaire card games
• Faerie Solitaire
• Mahjong solitaire
• Patience sorting
• Peg solitaire
• Solitaire terminology
• Solitaire (Windows)
• Soltrio Solitaire
• Spider Solitaire (Windows)
• Video poker

References

External links

• Solitaire at the Open Directory Project
• Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Solitaire or Patience, by Adelaide Cadogan, 1914, from Project Gutenberg
• Faerie Solitaire - Example of a AAA solitaire game, developed by Subsoap
• Games of patience for one or more players, second series, by Mary Whitmore Jones, about 1898, original book-scan from Archive.org
• Video demonstration a game of solitaire being played and associated commentary.
• The Mathematics of Solitaire - a video presentation about the Math behind solitaire
• Klondike Battle - A solitaire based card game (Russian Bank) for iPhone/Mac/Windows/Linux

From Wikisource

This work is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. It is not necessarily in the public domain in the United States if published from 1923 to 1977. For a US-applicable version, see {{PD-1996}}.

From LoveToKnow 1911

From Wikia Gaming, your source for walkthroughs, games, guides, and more!

Solitaire or Patience is any of a family of single-player card games of a generally similar character, but varying greatly in detail. The games are generally referred to as "patience" in British English and "solitaire" in American.

The layout consists of three areas: the foundations, the tableau and the stock. The object of the game is to remove all of the cards from the stock and tableau to the foundations in suit and sequence, usually from Ace to King.

They play requires building the tableau from the stock in sequence.

Other variations of this card game are Klondike and Canfield.

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